


Cut Your Bangs

by blackmountainbones



Category: Nathan Barley (TV), The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Angst, Bathroom Sex, Dan gets his shit together, Idiots in Love, M/M, Nathan Barley’s redemption arc, Oral Sex, Sobriety, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, breakups and makeups, but for real this time, but it takes a lot of pain to get there, don’t worry they eventually resolve it, endgame: everything is beautiful and nothing hurts, homoerotic hair-washing, this was supposed to be a Dan Ashcroft redemption fic but Nathan Barley came along for the ride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24447499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmountainbones/pseuds/blackmountainbones
Summary: After slipping in his sobriety, Dan Ashcroft, forty-year-old fuckup, attends Alcoholics Anonymous and gets his shit together. It just takes almost losing everything to motivate him to do it.
Relationships: Dan Ashcroft/Jones
Comments: 26
Kudos: 26
Collections: Bringing Back the Boosh 2020 Fic Exchange





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenBoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenBoo/gifts).



> This was based on a prompt from @QueenBoo, who prompted "How would Howard, the ultimate awkward single virgin, adjust to being in an actual relationship with Vince?" The muse latched onto the idea immediately, but insisted that it be Dan/Jones. So enjoy 40,000 words about Dan learning how to be in a relationship with Jones.
> 
> Well, it takes a village to write a fanfiction sometimes. Thanks as always to my wonderful crackwife, [@bobskeleton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BobSkeleton/pseuds/BobSkeleton), and the lovely [@ladadee195](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladadee195/pseuds/Ladadee195), who held my hand through this by setting timers for me to write on the nights the muse was being stubborn and didn't want to come. Thanks to [@thatswherethelightgetsin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatswherethelightgetsin/pseuds/Thatswherethelightgetsin) & [@concupiscence66](https://archiveofourown.org/users/concupiscence66/pseuds/concupiscence66) for letting me bounce ideas off them as I was developing this story. Thanks to my friend AAH, who let me interview them about their experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous, without whose insights this story would never have happened. And, finally, thanks to my crack team of betas, [@walkswithursus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkwithursus/pseuds/walkwithursus), [@a_little_boosh_maid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Little_Boosh_Maid/pseuds/A_Little_Boosh_Maid), and [@bobskeleton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BobSkeleton/pseuds/BobSkeleton) for explaining time to me, as well as all the work you did to help improve this story and keep it consistent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did lots of research on Alcoholics Anonymous for this project, including researching on the Web, reading some AA literature, and interviewing a friend who had used AA to get sober. I did play fast and loose with some of the details, twisting them a bit to suit my narrative purposes, but I hope that I have been respectful enough of the spirit behind them that they remain recognizable. More information about AA terms and traditions can be found in the chapter end notes.

Dan stared at his laptop. 

The document on which he’d been working (or rather, thinking about working on) was defiantly blank. Had been that way since he’d sat down with the intention of writing three hours ago.

He lit a cigarette, pointedly avoiding glancing at the overflowing ashtray on the coffee table as he leaned back into the worn, sagging cushions of the ancient leather couch. It had been old six years ago, when he and Jones had found it in the trash and carried it back to the flat at three in the morning, drunk and rolling their faces off on E. 

Had it really been six years...? Dan checked his maths, came up with the same answer. And he’d been living here for four years before that. 

The flat had been a bare space, like a cavern, then, still bearing signs of its industrial origins. In the last decade, Jones had built in a bathroom, a bedroom, and a kitchen, all painted in the kind of bright, chaotic colors that made Dan’s eyes scream. The living room, like the bedroom, was covered with Jones’s DJ equipment (his soundboards, synthesizers, records, and turntables) and a number of macabre art projects, mostly self-portraits and dolls Jones had found in the rubbish and remade into grotesque sculptures.

So much could change in ten years, Dan thought. Ten years ago, he’d just begun working at SugaRape (though it had been SugarApe back then, before Barley’s arrival and the provocative name change). He’d had yet to become a cult figure, but he’d already had a few years’ worth of alcoholism under his belt.

In the intervening years, he’d risen to become the Preacher of Hoxditch, with a small yet devoted cult of fans, jumped out a window, quit his job, broken his back in three places, and quit drinking. 

Damn, Dan wanted a drink so bad that he could almost  _ taste _ it, the smoky burn of whiskey on his throat, the malty taste of beer on his tongue. He sucked his upper lip into his mouth to lick his moustache, a long-established muscle memory from all the times beer foam had caught in it over the years, before he could stop himself. 

All he got was a mouthful of hair, and Dan grimaced, spilling ashes from his cigarette onto the much-abused wooden tabletop. Not that it would have made much of a difference if he’d managed to use the ashtray, considering the way it was overflowing. He stubbed out the fag and dragged the laptop back into his lap. His mind was racing, yet his fingers remained still, the document blank.

He’d never quite mastered this, the art of writing sober. Writing well required a certain honesty that had never come easily to him—Dan was a born liar. Alcohol had always loosened him up, made it easy—no, not easy,  _ easier _ , it was always hard—to put the truth on the page before he could cover it up with a lie. He’d write drunk, edit drunker, or else he’d edit the truth all out of it.

It was no coincidence, then, that he’d been unable to write since he’d quit drinking. It wasn’t even that he was writing  _ poorly _ , no—he wasn’t writing at  _ all _ . He’d been completely unable to type a complete sentence since he’d come home from the hospital, recovering from back surgery and on a cocktail of Oxycontin and Percocet that would have made a junkie drool.

Only thing was, alcohol and the pills didn’t mix. By the time the doctors told him, Dan’d already gone through the DTs and the detox, didn’t fancy experiencing  _ that _ again anytime soon—or ever. He’d figured out the only way to do that was either to stay quit, or stay drunk until he died. As much as he’d needed a drink before, now he needed the pills more. After the broken hip, the three smashed vertebrae, the dozen titanium screws in his spine—the pain would always be there, but at least the pills took the edge off. So he’d chosen staying quit.

Sometimes he wondered if he’d made the right choice. Times like now, when the words stubbornly refused to materialize on the page, he’d remember how easy it had been, and wonder if it was worth it.

Writing was the only thing Dan had ever been good at. He’d only been adequate at history and science, abysmal at maths, and had utterly failed French three terms in a row, yet his English marks were always at the top of the class. Teachers sang his praises; he won writing contests effortlessly. His grades were below-average, but he’d gotten a full ride to uni by writing scholarship essays. He’d gotten the very first magazine job he’d applied for, and his very first published article had won him critical acclaim. 

And as long as he kept drinking, the words kept coming. And they’d been such beautiful words. Dan had never been the most prolific writer, but when he was inspired, the words poured out of him like blood, spewing like an artery. He couldn’t stop until they were written down, although every tap of the keyboard was anguish. The more exquisite the suffering suffused into the pages, the better Dan’s writing got.

Which only made the fact that he couldn’t write a damn thing so much worse. 

It wasn’t like he didn’t have anything to write about, either—everyone likes a good redemption arc. Dan’s literary senses tingled at the irony of a Preacher needing to be redeemed.

But Dan had long suspected that he could only write when he was self-destructing. He stared at the laptop and wiped his mouth, another tic leftover from the drinking times, before catching himself, putting his hands on the keyboard, and waiting.

He was awakened hours later by a voice.

“Dan?”

Dan blinked. He couldn’t see much more with his eyes open than closed; Jones hadn’t turned on the lights. 

“Dan, c’mon, it’s time to go to bed,” Jones urged, prodding Dan’s shoulder gently as if to keep him from falling back asleep before he managed to get off the couch. “You’ll be much more comfortable there.”

Dan shut the laptop. Its screen was dark and dead, no doubt run out of battery before he managed to commit even a single word to the page. Groggily, he put it on the table, knocking the ashtray over in the process.

Neither he nor Jones moved to clean it up. Instead, Jones stepped forward to grab Dan under the arms, hoisting him onto his feet. Dan was thankful—he already knew that his back was going to hurt something fierce tomorrow from falling asleep on his laptop. 

“You shouldn’t sleep on the couch like that,” Jones scolded, leading Dan to bed. “You’re gonna be complaining tomorrow.” There was no cruelty in his scolding, only concern.

“I know,” Dan mumbled. He knew he had to be careful about those things now, but he still fell asleep on his laptop more often than he should have.

Some famous writer had said that consistency was the most important thing about writing, that he always wrote at the same time and place so the muse would always know where to find him.  _ Wanker _ . Dan had been sitting at the couch with his laptop nearly every night for a year, yet the muse hadn’t come to visit once.

She’d always come when he’d been drinking. His muse wasn’t lost, she was just  _ thirsty _ .

Jones didn’t say anything, just fussed over positioning Dan properly. Dan let him: he needed to sleep with several precisely-placed pillows to avoid waking up in pain. He liked when Jones fussed over him, though he would never have admitted it aloud. He liked being put to bed like this, posed like one of Jones’s nightmare Barbies.

Jones might have only played with broken toys, but he always treated them as if they were precious, even if they were missing an arm or an eye or had had their hair burned off. He’d wash them and paint them and dye their hair, talking softly the whole time as though they were spooked animals that needed to be soothed into letting him take care of them. He did the same with Dan. Dan supposed he wasn’t much different from all of Jones’s other broken toys. 

So it was no surprise to either of them that Dan failed to protest when Jones crawled into bed beside him and took him in his arms, holding their bodies together. Jones rested a hand on Dan’s belly, rucking up his shirt, caressing the trail of hair leading down into his boxers, warm and solid. It made Dan’s cock leap hopefully, despite his exhaustion.

He needn’t have worried. Jones did all the work, taking Dan in his arms, taking him apart, careful to keep Dan’s hips supported as he fucked him. 

Afterwards, Dan fell asleep again, this time to the sound of Jones’s breath, in and out and in again.

When he woke up, Jones was nowhere to be seen, but his hair was all over the pillows, so Dan knew that it hadn’t been a fever dream. 

It took him a few minutes to get himself up, his broken back and shattered hips having cramped a bit during the night. He did his stretches, breathing through the pain until it receded enough for Dan to hoist himself up and swing his feet over the side of the bed onto the floor with a groan.

Pain radiated from his feet to the base of his spine as he stood. Dan grit his teeth and breathed, waiting for the worst of the pain to dissipate before he even tried to walk.

Luckily, despite the rough start to the morning, Dan was able to walk, albeit slowly, into the kitchen, where he found Jones double-fisting coffee in mismatched oversized mugs, black and sweet. 

“Morning,” Dan said, standing awkwardly in the kitchen in his smalls. “Sleep well?”

Jones rolled his eyes. “You know I didn’t. Hardly got any sleep at all. It’s the snoring.” He swallowed a loud slurp of coffee. “It was really loud last night. Worse than usual.”

“Sorry,” Dan apologized. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. He never knew what he was supposed to say after that, so he never said anything.

“Keeps me up,” Jones said. “Good thing I don’t need much sleep.” 

Dan bit down a comment about Jones’s favored cocktail of coffee and uppers, which, for all Dan’s teetotaling these days, he knew Jones hadn’t given up.

Not that Dan would have asked him to. Uppers had never been Dan’s preferred poison. Cocaine and speed just made Dan’s heart race, made his already-racing thoughts race twice as fast, whereas booze had always slowed things down and kept the edge off his anxiety. Now all Dan had were cigarettes, Percocet, and OxyContin, the latter two prescribed rather than recreational. “Are you—tired?” he asked Jones.

Jones looked up at him. The whites of his eyes were red, and he had deep shadows under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. “No,” he lied, and Dan wanted to tell him that he knew the truth, but he let the moment go, even though Jones looked like he was one frayed electrical cord away from lighting them both on fire. 

Dan cleared his throat. “I’m meeting Claire for dinner this evening,” he lied. “You can grab a nap after your shift at the Knives.” The Stanley Knives was a hipster hair salon where Jones alternated between the turntables and styling hair.

“Thanks,” Jones said, “but I’ve got plans. Doing a show Saturday with Margaret Thatcher--have you heard of them? They’re a new DJ collective; we’ve gotta figure out how to wire everything together by Friday.”

“Oh,” Dan said.

“S’fine,” Jones said. “Besides, there’s always coffee, isn’t there?” He squeezed Dan’s shoulder affectionately, cocking his head. Dan reflexively angled his own face just  _ so _ , and Jones leaned in to peck a kiss onto Dan’s lips. It was bitter with the aftertaste of coffee.

Dan had never liked the taste of coffee; he’d drunk it solely to kill the hangover as quickly as possible. Now that he was sober, he stuck mostly to tea. “You taste like an espresso machine.”

“Touche,” Jones said, “you taste like an ashtray,” but he kissed Dan again anyway.

They hadn’t given a name to this thing between them, just fallen into it after Dan had come home from the hospital in a walker. Jones and Claire had carried him upstairs that first day, and then Claire left and Jones put him to bed the way the nurses had taught him to, then crawled in beside him. He’d come back the next night, and then the next, and then the night after that, and Dan had never thought to question it.

And it had been so long, years, since someone had held Dan like that, without the promise of sex, that he’d fallen for Jones right then and there. Not that he hadn’t thought about it—Jones was full of youthful excitement, slim and androgynously attractive in a way that Dan had always found hard to resist. He’d lived with Jones for years, though he’d been so drunk most nights before the accident that his dick rarely got hard enough to fuck—he couldn’t have made a move even if he’d wanted to. 

Not that he’d missed it much. The booze kept Dan company, kept him as warm at night as any lover; the weeks after he’d woken from his coma had been cold and lonely. But that night, sober and lying next to Jones in the bedroom of their shared flat, Dan felt a curious thing: comfort. That night, in the clarity of sobriety, Dan had realized something: Jones  _ wanted _ him. He could feel the heat of Jones’s body against him, the way that the warmth pooled between Jones’s legs, hot enough to feel even between the self-conscious space Jones had left between their lower bodies.

It had taken some weeks before Dan had been brave enough to kiss him. And when he finally cornered Jones against the kitchen island two months after leaving the hospital, Jones had reciprocated with the fervor of a man who had been lost at sea finally seeing land. 

Jones arrived back at the flat at six that evening, groggily carting his deck with him. 

“Thought you were going to your mate’s.”

“Too fucking tired,” Jones sighed. “I’ve only had eight hours’ sleep for the last three days.”

Dan decided to get out of the flat. Jones insisted he could sleep through anything, but he was lying. Jones was an annoyingly light sleeper; he woke up at the slightest floorboard creak or slammed cabinet door. If Dan had kept him up all night with his snoring, then he figured giving Jones a couple of hours of uninterrupted quiet time was the least he could do. 

The irony was not wholly lost on Dan, the fact that Jones needed silence to sleep, while awake he was a riot of noise. And he was never so loud as when Dan was trying to sleep, but Dan didn’t mind. Jones’s noise comforted him. A lullabye, the kind of lullabye only Jones could sing.

The streets of Hoxditch were filthy with gentrification. In the year or so that Dan spent recovering, the old warehouses and workman’s cafes had been replaced by countless trendy bars and microbreweries, and the former autobody chop shops and towing businesses replaced by trendy clothing shops and glass-fronted condominiums that cost upwards of a million pounds. The idiots had completed their colonization of the neighborhood Dan had lived in for over a decade, bringing with them their trendy cafes and overpriced clothing stores.

Dan hated it. It had been a shock to walk down the local high street for the first time, nearly a year after he’d jumped from the window. He barely recognized the neighborhood he’d come to love so fiercely (not that Dan would ever have admitted to loving something unironically); it made him feel homesick in a way he’d never felt for his  _ actual _ home back in Leeds.

One of the colonizers knocked into him while he was lost in thought. She lifted her eyes from her phone only long enough to sneer, “Oi! Watch it!”, then returned her gaze to the screen. Dan sneered at her ironic mullet and quickly-retreating back, not that she either noticed or cared. 

The only thing that was the same was the Nailgun Arms. It was the only thing Dan recognized. 

Dan’s right hip was starting to ache, the one that he’d shattered. He knew he’d have to find a place to sit down soon, a place where he could rest a while, gathering his strength before making his way back to the flat. 

Before he knew it, he was sitting in a stool at the bar, unable to explain how he’d gotten there. One moment he’d been standing on the sidewalk in front of the Arms, the next, he was sitting at the bar as though he had teleported from the street into the seat in an instant.

The bartender hadn’t changed in the year and a half since Dan had been here last. He simply cocked an eyebrow, and Dan nodded, and before he knew what was happening, there was a shot of whiskey and a lager on the bar in front of him.

Dan stared at the drinks for a minute. It had been eighteen months. He took a sniff of the whiskey, held it to his lips just enough to wet them. It was acrid, sharper than Dan remembered, unpleasantly so, and he dropped the shot glass back down so quickly he almost spilled it. 

The lager was a different story. Eighteen months wasn’t nearly long enough for Dan to have lost his taste for beer. He craved beer like a lost lover—the taste, the smell, the intoxication. He longed for it, pined for it even, all the while knowing he was better off without it. 

Dan held the beer to his nose and sniffed. It was malty and rich, just like he remembered; the carbonation tickled his moustache. Surely one sip couldn’t hurt...

The taste exploded onto his tongue. Dan swallowed first one mouthful, then another. In the same sort of bizarro time travel that had whisked him from the sidewalk and into the pub, the pint glass was empty. 

It had been so long since he’d had a drink that the beer went straight to his head. He recognized the feeling immediately, the warmth in his cheeks, the languid feeling in his limbs, the pleasantly-stretched feeling in his stomach. It felt like coming home. 

The bartender caught his eye. “Another one, Preacher Man?”

The old nickname made Dan blanch. The bartender must have mistaken his grimace for a nod, and served him a fresh pint. “Drinks on me tonight,” he said, flashing Dan a smile that was crooked and grey from nicotine and neglect. “Nice to have you back.”

Dan lifted the glass in a toast, put it to his lips, and swallowed.

Dan stumbled back to the flat after midnight, half-conscious and operating on muscle memory. Thankfully, he managed to avoid falling into any trash cans or pissing onto any bums. Eventually, he managed to make it to the squat, though it took him a few tries to get his key into the door.

He clunked up the stairs. Never graceful at the best of times, Dan walked like an elephant when he was drunk. He lost his footing, grabbing at the handrail as he hauled himself upstairs. Had there always been this many? He couldn’t remember.

Eventually, he reached the top of the stairs. The door to the apartment wasn’t locked, which meant Jones was home.  _ Jones _ . Just the thought of him made Dan horny. He’d missed drunk sex, sloppy, loose, and silly—when he wasn’t too pissed to get it up, at least...

Jones was standing in the kitchen, already awake, though it didn’t look like he’d been awake long. His hair was still mussed with sleep and sticking up on one side; he was wearing nothing but a shirt that he’d cut the sleeves off of and a pair of neon-yellow pants through which Dan could clearly see the outline of his cock.

The sight made Dan’s cock throb, though who knew if he’d be able to get it up. It didn’t matter; his mouth went wet with want, and Dan sidled up next to him, laying a sloppy kiss on Jones’s cheek. He’d been aiming for Jones’s mouth, but the alcohol made it difficult to get it right.

Jones shrugged him off, hard enough that Dan nearly lost his balance. He managed to catch himself at the last minute on the edge of the kitchen island. 

“Get away from me. You stink.” Jones took a deep sniff, the nostrils of his prodigious nose flaring. “What time is it? Are you hungover?”

“How can I be hungover, Jonesy, if I’m still drunk?” Dan said, his words slurring as he stumbled and caught himself on the kitchen counter. 

Jones narrowed his eyes, realization dawning on his face. “Sit down,” he said curtly, pushing Dan onto one of the two mismatched chairs clustered around the kitchen island. “You need coffee,” he ordered, turning to his coffee maker.

Dan went down easily. He was drunk, but he did not fail to notice the resentment in Jones’s voice. “I hate coffee,” Dan griped. 

Jones ignored him, just tapped his fingernails on the counter as he waited for the coffee to brew. 

Jones shook his head, condescending. “Well I ain’t talking to you when you’re drunk, so drink it, or else I’m going to bed, and you ain’t allowed to join me til you sober up.”

“I already want to die all the time,” Dan said. “Coffee won’t kill me.” He took a sip. “I don’t know if it’s worth it, Jones.” He cradled the mug in his hands. “What if I never write another word?”

Jones slammed his oversized coffee mug on the table with a heavy  _ thud _ . “Then you do something else. You don’t just  _ die _ because your dream doesn’t work out.”

Anger flared up in Dan’s stomach. He could taste it in the back of his mouth like heartburn. “What’s keeping you alive then, Jones?” Dan spat, firing back. “You’re thirty and still living in a squat, working part time as a hairdresser while you try to become a DJ.” He knew it was low, but he  _ was _ low. 

“At least I’m not  _ forty _ and living in a squat with a part-time hairdresser and wannabe DJ, who, by the way, pays the rent on this place so you can sit at home and wank all day,” Jones hissed. 

Dan wanted to say that he didn’t  _ wank _ all day, but Jones crossed his arms and cut him off. “Listen, Dan, I known you for ten years. And in all that time, I never seen you bring anyone home more’n a night or two, but you damn well came home drunk off your arse night after night.” He reached for his coffee, taking a long sip to calm the hitch in his voice. “And now we sleep together, but I ain’t naive—you had the booze long before you ever met me.”

“Jones—”

Jones barreled past him, a barrage of words. “Listen, I’m not gonna tell you you can’t drink. But I ain’t gonna stick around in a relationship where I always come second.”

Dan tried to say something but his tongue lolled in his mouth, slack. 

“And don’t tell me that you’re gonna drink, but not get fucked up, cos I know you, and I know what you’re like. You go back to the booze—you love it so much there’s no room left for anything else.” His voice and his features softened, taking on a wistful look. “Not even me.”

Dan’s fingers scrabbled at the kitchen island. He felt like he was falling, like the gravity in the room had suddenly gotten too heavy. Drunk as he was, he understood what Jones meant. Even now, alcohol’s embrace warmed him. It was warm and familiar, like slipping into your ex’s bed. 

The metaphor, as soon as it crossed Dan’s mind, rang discomfitingly true. He certainly felt like a man caught by his current partner in his ex-lover’s bed. He wanted to tell Jones not to worry, that Dan still loved him best and it would never happen again, but it felt too much like a lie, and Jones deserved better than that.

“I mean it, Dan,” Jones warned, lying on the couch and arranging a pile of blankets on top of himself. “I ain’t gonna sit by and watch you self-destruct again.” His eyes narrowed. “You might survive but I won’t.”

He looked so small and lost that Dan wanted to comfort him, but when he reached for Jones, he shirked away.

Dan’s hand dropped to his side. “What do you want me to do, Jones?” he asked, voice breaking.

“You’re a grown man,” Jones sniped. “Figure it out for yourself.”

He pulled the blanket over his head. Dan stood at the kitchen island, feeling unmoored.

The bed felt too big and too cold without Jones there. Dan swallowed half a glass of water in one gulp, then arranged the pillows against his pressure points. Jones didn’t always put him to bed—he still rarely got in before three or four in the morning—but Dan wished that he could go back to the night before, when Jones had put him to bed.

He burped, and the stale-beer taste was sour in his mouth. Dan knew he should probably brush his teeth, but he didn’t trust himself to leave the bedroom right now without doing something embarrassing, something like dragging Jones off the sofa and back to bed where he belonged.

But he didn’t, just sat on the edge of the bed, gripping his water glass in his hand. He reached for one of the six orange pill bottles lined up on his nightstand. The pills rattled in his shaking hand as he fumbled with the lid; eventually, practice made perfect, and Dan popped the lid, shaking two small round white pills out into his palm. 

He had a sip of water in his mouth, ready to swallow, when he thought better of it. Back before the fall, Dan would think nothing of mixing booze and pills; he’d managed, through sheer force of his own well-developed tolerance, not to stop breathing and die in his sleep despite the dangerous interaction of drugs. But he was out of practice now, and the last thing he needed was to die alone in his sleep—that would only prove Jones right.

His swallowed, the water making his stomach, still full of beer and coffee, roil. He shoved the pills back into the bottle, shoving his painkillers into the back of the drawer of the nightstand, even though his back was already beginning to ache. 

An ambulance roared by, its sirens wailing. It came to an abrupt stop somewhere nearby; its strobing lights cast flickering shadows throughout the room. Dan lay awake, his body hurting and his head swimming from the drink, unable to sleep, his thoughts beginning to creep up on him in the bed which was suddenly too large for him alone though it had always seemed too small when Jones was in it with him. 

Though this had ostensibly been Jones’s room from the start, it was strangely bereft of any obvious signs of Jones. Unlike the living room, which was cluttered with Jones’s many self-portraits in disparate media, the only sign of Jones’s occupancy was the pair of oversized neon green headphones and a pile of tangled plastic raver necklaces on the night table. 

Dan laid alone in the big bed, desperately wishing for whiskey and Jones, unable to tell which he missed more. He’d broken the longest streak of sobriety he’d experienced since his first drink at fifteen, and, worse—he hadn’t even written a damned word. He’d been fooling himself that it had been the drink that had powered his screeds; the drink hadn’t made it any easier to write. It had, however, made it easier for Dan to say the kinds of things he would regret. Already regretted.

No, something else had broken in Dan when he’d jumped out that window. He just didn’t know what.

The lights on the ambulance shut off, casting the room in darkness. The engine kicked on, backfiring loudly, then a woman’s wailing voice broke into a cry. Dan wondered if the bastard had made it, punched his pillow, and closed his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes on AA vocabulary and culture:  
> When members reach certain sobriety milestones (1 day, 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, and 3 month, 6 months, 9 months, and yearly) they receive a coin. In addition to receiving a coin on yearly anniversaries, the group celebrates these milestones like birthdays.
> 
> Sponsors mentor other members of the group. They often assign mentees little jobs to do, called “tasks” and “responsibilities”, to help them develop the skills needed to maintain their sobriety.
> 
> Tasks are given by sponsors to sponsees in order to distract them from their cravings. The idea is that you do something for someone else to get your mind off your problems (AA has a big culture of “playing it forward”). Dan’s task to call someone every day and ask how they’re doing is one example.
> 
> Responsibilities are intended to involve a member in the group, such as making coffee or setting up chairs or cleaning the meeting space. Involvement in the group helps the mentee develop a support network made up of sober people.
> 
> The AA Big Book is sort of the AA Bible. Most of the other books are based on the Big Book to some degree, as well as the meetings themselves. There are other books, such as Daily Meditations, a book of affirmations, and the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, a book that explains the infamous “12 steps” in detail. 
> 
> I didn’t go into detail on on the whole 12 steps in this fic, nor did I mention the traditions, but more information can be found here: https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/twelve-steps-and-twelve-traditions
> 
> Other terms:  
> Tool and die shops: like hardware stores for industrial machines. They often have things like lathes and CAAD machines on-site to custom-make parts from spec.
> 
> Autobody chop shop: shady garage that probably is engaged in money laundering or else a front for or other illegal business


	2. ii.

Dan woke up at six pm, hungover and awful. 

There was no sign of Jones in the flat.

He had six missed calls and four messages, none of them from Jones. In fact, they were all from Claire. Evidently, he’d slept through their weekly lunch date.

Dan forced himself to sit up. It took longer than he’d’ve liked; the pain radiated from his spine down to his feet, accompanied by a nausea and an ache in his head that he recognized as a hangover. He rested his feet on the ground and massaged his forehead as though he might be able to soothe the pain away manually. It didn’t work.

He downed the last of the water in the glass by the sink, dragging himself to the bathroom to shower and brush his teeth. Every movement was agony, but Dan stubbornly waited to take his pills until he’d managed to wash the stink of the drink off of himself—he needed the pain, needed to remind himself of the reasons why he wasn’t supposed to drink anymore. 

In the past, he’d’ve dealt with the hangover with a bit of the hair of the dog, and Dan was tempted. Luckily, Jones had cleaned out their liquor cabinets before Dan got out of the hospital, and Dan had not gotten around to restocking them, or else it would have been all too easy to walk down the hall and open the cabinet under the kitchen sink, what Dan had always cheekily called his liquor cabinet. It was where most people kept their dangerous household chemicals, a habit born out of drunken irony, and perhaps, Dan mused, he hadn’t been wrong. Surely bleach had never poisoned him as badly as the booze. 

Once he was showered, Dan brewed a cup of tea, then checked his phone. There was still nothing from Jones, but Claire had called again, and Dan grudgingly called her back—ever since he’d jumped out the window that one time, Claire would go a little nuts if he didn’t at least text a response to her phone calls. 

Claire answered the phone on the first ring. “You missed brunch, you arsehole.” She sounded annoyed, but Dan knew it was only because she’d missed him.

“Yeah,” Dan said, skipping over the kind of apologies that siblings with a less antagonistic relationship might have expected. “Probably for the best. I don’t think my stomach can handle food right now.” He took a sip of his tea, which was about all he could manage to put in his stomach without immediately vomiting it back up. Claire remained silent, not bothering to ask why he was feeling ill. Dan sipped again, waiting for her to say something; when she didn’t, he sighed and said, “I might have gotten a bit pissed last night.”

“No wonder you sound like shit,” Claire huffed. She was doing her best to sound indignant, but Dan could hear the bluff in her voice, knew that she was worried beneath her bravado.

“I feel like shit,” Dan admitted. He didn’t say he wouldn’t do it again—Claire knew better than to believe that, so he never bothered promising. 

“You _are_ shit,” Claire agreed. 

“I think,” Dan said slowly, “that Jones is mad at me.”

Claire made a choking sound on the other end of the line. “Oh, Dan, you didn’t,” her tone changed from disdain to worry. She never asked about Jones, and Dan had never told her. He hadn’t tried to hide it, either, and Claire had fat arms but she wasn’t _daft_ . In fact, when she’d first moved in with them, a few months before SugarApe became SugaRape and Dan started his accelerated slide into alcohol and despair, she’d assumed that he and Jones were a thing, and had been unable to contain her surprise at learning that they _weren’t_.

Maybe they hadn’t been fucking, but they’d always been something a little more than friends. More than two blokes who lived together. Maybe Jones was right—they’d never fucked when Dan was drunk because there had always been the drink between them.

It felt weird to talk to Claire about this. Dan had not consciously tried to hide his developing relationship with Jones, but he had never _talked_ about it with anyone. Who would he have talked to? He had let his friendships lapse—outside of Jones, it turned out most of his friends had been little more than drinking buddies. He hadn’t kept in touch with any of his publishing contacts; what was the point, really, when he had nothing to submit?

“Look, I don’t claim to understand whatever it is you guys do, but you better get your shit together and unfuck whatever it is you’ve fucked up now, Dan.”

“I don’t know how,” Dan said, surprised at how small and sad the words sounded.

“Get the fuck out of bed,” Claire said, and Dan looked around guiltily before reminding himself Claire no longer had keys, “take a shower, and by God, Dan, do try not to dress like a hobo.”

“I am out of bed, and I have showered,” Dan said.

“But you _are_ dressed like a hobo,” Claire retorted. “Trim your beard, shave your balls, cut your bangs, do whatever it is you have to do, just try and be a functioning human for once.”

“Then what?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know,” Claire admitted. “You know Jones better than I do.”

That wasn’t saying much, since when Claire lived with them, her conversations with Jones had mostly consisted of screaming at Jones to turn the music down so she could sleep. And Dan might have lived with Jones for a decade, but how well did he know Jones? Jones liked coffee and trash night. He liked MDMA and noise. He liked punk music and house, liked tying Dan up and teasing ‘til he begged. None of these things gave him any idea how to make Jones happy again.

“But it’s not about Jones,” Claire continued, “it’s about _you_ , Dan. Do you keep drinking, or do you give it up again?”

Dan’s mouth watered at just the thought of it. He wiped his moustache; his hand shook as he did. 

The image made him flashback to waking up in the hospital, seventy-two hours after his last drink and deep in the delirium tremens. His whole body felt like a guitar that had been strung too tight, and someone was plucking the string, making his whole body vibrate out of control. 

The shakes lasted three days. They’d loaded him up with Xanax to keep his blood pressure from spiking, but it hadn’t been enough to knock him out. He’d lain awake, unable to stop the shaking, while he watched a grotesque parade of Nathan Barley and preachermen and his own failings swarm out from between the greying drop ceiling tiles.

Dan cleared his throat. “No.” His voice wavered. He tried again. “I... want to quit. And stay quit.”

“Well, how are you gonna do that, Dan?” Claire asked.

Dan didn’t have an answer for that, so he hung up the phone. 

Afterwards, Dan puttered about the flat, ostensibly cleaning but actually making small messes until he ran out of things to do. There was still no sign of Jones, and while Dan was antsy and anxious, he didn’t want to go for a walk; the morning’s pills hadn’t been enough to make his leg stop hurting from skipping his meds last night, and he didn’t trust himself not to head down to the Arms and order another round. Not yet.

He supposed yesterday’s disaster and today’s pain should have been enough to keep him from craving the booze, but the relapse only made the craving worse. Dan’s conscious mind knew he shouldn’t drink, didn’t _want_ to drink, but his body—it was as if his very cells had a memory of their own.

As long as he stayed inside, he could keep from drinking. Going outside meant alcohol was everywhere—at the off-license at the corner, at every one of the endless hipster restaurants and in all the pubs on Charlotte Street. No, better to stay in, Dan thought, brewing his fourth cup of tea. His mind was racing from the caffeine, and his heart, too, but he knew it was better than beer.

Eventually, Dan ran out of messes to make. With nothing on the telly able to keep his imagination, and unable to concentrate on a book, he booted up his computer, and pulled up the file he’d been working on two days ago, before he’d bolloxed up his life yet again. It was still blank, and Dan stared at it, not that he expected the words to manifest on the page.

He clicked open his browser, mindlessly surfing through the headlines. The same tawdry gossip as always—crooked politicians and perverted celebrity scandals. The headlines screamed about some starlet who’d overdosed at Cirque le Soir, the latest trendy club to have been infiltrated by the local idiot population, last night.

Dan recognized the girl as Mandy from Barley’s pedophilia scandal, and he clicked on the link out of a morbid curiosity. The article failed to mention Barley, and Dan was mildly disappointed to discover that Nathan had not been implicated in the incident. But Barley was like that—his daddy’s money had a way of making sure he weaseled out of any scandal squeaky-clean.

He was about to close the browser tab when the last paragraph of the article caught his eye. “ _Mandy’s struggles with drug and alcohol addiction have been very public. It is estimated that nearly 600,000 people in England suffer from addiction. If you are one of them, there are several organizations that can help you to overcome your addiction...”_ The article went on to list a number of rehab facilities and other groups, including the UK Alcoholics Anonymous site. 

Dan’s finger hovered on the trackpad, right over the link, for several moments before he clicked.

It couldn’t _hurt_. Maybe he could go to one meeting. If it was terrible, he’d leave and never come back again.

He clicked the link. The page loaded, bold letters proclaiming: GET HELP NOW! TYPE YOUR POSTCODE TO FIND A MEETING TODAY!

Out of curiosity more than anything, Dan typed his postcode into the box. A list of several meetings popped up on the map, including one at the Lutheran church Dan passed on the way to the local Tube stop. They met every day at 3 and again at 7. 

Dan immediately closed the browser. He closed his eyes, counting his breaths. When he opened them, he was greeted by the blinking cursor at the top of his blank document.

That was how Jones found him, three hours later, staring at the screen of his laptop so long he’d gone cross-eyed.

Jones arrived in the flat the way he arrived everywhere—in a riot of noise. His platform sneakers clodded noisily around the flat as he walked to the bedroom, not even bothering to acknowledge Dan.

Dan gave him a few minutes to calm down, but when Jones didn’t pop back out of the room for a coffee or a chat, Dan went to check on him. Jones was yanking armfuls of clothing out of the wardrobe, tossing them onto the bed next to an abused and ancient duffel bag. He was so absorbed in his task that he didn’t notice Dan—or else he was ignoring him. 

Dan put a hand on Jones’s shoulder. “Jones—”

“Leave off, Dan,” Jones snapped, “I ain’t got time to talk.” He made a show of checking his neon-yellow jelly raver watch, the one Dan hated. “I got a train to catch in an hour, and my ride to the train is picking me up in twenty minutes.”

“Where you going, Jones?” Dan asked, feigning a lightheartedness he did not feel.

“Brighton,” Jones said, not bothering to elaborate.

“Brighton?” Dan asked. Brighton didn’t seem like Jones’s kind of place—it was far too tacky and, well, _mainstream_. Besides, Jones rarely left London (he hated all forms of driving—refused to learn to drive and even sometimes got anxious on buses), and when he did, it was usually to some industrial discotheque inside of an abandoned factory in a place like (northern industrial town), the kinds of places where Jones’s particular brand of avant-garde noise was welcome, not a place like Brighton where the DJs spun mixes of Top 40 hits of today and yesteryear. “A gig?”

Jones opened a dresser drawer and yanked out a handful of neon-colored clothing. “Nah,” he said. “I need a change of scene for a while. ‘Sides, my parents retired there a couple years ago. Still haven’t been out to check out their new place.”

Dan was stunned. In the decade he’d known Jones, he had had no idea that Jones had parents, much less the kind of people who retired to a place like Brighton. He’d assumed that Jones was some kind of feral child. He certainly acted like one, and Dan had assumed he’d been raised either by a pack of stray dogs, or else he was from the rough sort of London stock that lived hard and died young. “You have parents?”

Jones shot him an incredulous look. “A mum and a dad, same as everyone _._ ” He tossed a couple of pairs of drainpipes to the pile of neon shirts on the bed. “How do you not know about this, Dan? I _told_ you about them, dozens of times.”

Dan stuttered, but before he could respond, Jones cut him off. “Don’t answer that. I know why.” He shoved the pile of clothing into the duffel and zipped it angrily. “You were _drunk_.” 

“Jones... Jones, I’m sorry,” Dan said softly.

Jones laughed, the sound harsh and hollow between them. “Yeah, me too, Dan.” He shrugged the bag over his shoulder and pulled his headphones over his ears and left.

The flat was quieter than Dan could ever remember it. Even when Jones wasn’t home, the place positively _echoed_ with his presence. It had never been empty, as long as Jones lived here.

Jones hadn’t bothered to tell him when he was coming home. Dan was worried it might be never. 

He couldn’t say he blamed him. Dan was even worse at being Jones’s partner than he’d been his roommate, and he’d been a shit roommate: he never cleaned, ate all the leftovers, and only paid rent half the time, and even then he’d been late. Despite that, Jones had never even threatened to kick him out.

Dan thought back to the night, ten years ago now, that Jones had taken him in. He’d been living out of his car after breaking up with his girlfriend. Even now, Falkirk Road was still rough, lined with half-abandoned industrial buildings and ancient, crumbling townhouses though the rest of Hoxditch had gentrified. Ten years ago, however, locals knew that Falkirk Road was the kind of street where one got mugged, or even murdered. 

Dan had known that, and he’d tried to avoid spending the night there, but he’d spent hours driving around the neighborhood, looking for a safer spot to spend the night. When his eyes began drooping so much he could barely keep them open, he finally gave up and parked across from the House of Jones, falling asleep before he even managed to remove the keys from the ignition.

He’d been awakened by the sound of someone knocking on his window. Dan shot awake, his survival instincts buzzing, to see a young man, not more than twenty, with shaggy hair that had been dyed black with chunky blonde streaks, a face that was mostly nose, and the biggest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen. 

The man knocked on the glass again, shouting, “Oi! Oi, mate!” as he did.

Annoyed, Dan cracked open the window to hiss back, “What the hell do you want?” 

“Mate, you can’t park here,” the stranger said. He had a thick accent—half Cockney, half gutterpunk. 

“The fuck are you? The parking police?” He certainly _didn’t_ look like the parking police, with his tight black jeans and chunky plastic raver jewelry.

The punk laughed. “You honestly think someone that looks like me could be some kinda pig?” He gestured to his drainpipes and shrunken doll’s head necklace. “I mean, you could stay out here. It’s your life. But you should probably know that there was a murder on this street just last week.” Dan startled upright. “They haven’t found the guy yet.”

Dan tilted the car seat into the upright position and sighed. “Thanks for telling me, mate.” He fumbled a packet of fags from the console; the punk eyed the packet hungrily, until Dan gave in and rolled down his window to offer him one. Dan fished in his pockets for a lighter; the punk removed a bright yellow lighter from his pocket and lit both their cigarettes. 

The punk exhaled a stream of smoke. “Finding parking’s going to be a bitch this time of night, huh?”

“Ugh, tell me about it,” Dan groaned. “I drove around for hours looking for a spot...”

“You know—you could stay with me. Just for the night. It’s not much but at least you won’t be on the street.” Dan shot the punk a dubious look. “Look, I’m not some kinda junkie. Not gonna rob you while you sleep nor nuffink. ‘M just a bloke who’s saying you don’t have to kip on the street tonight if you don’t wanna.”

Dan took a deep drag of his fag, stroking the three-day growth of beard on his jaw as he considered. The punk flashed him a smile—while his face was put together too weird to be conventionally attractive, he had a good smile. Friendly. A smile you could trust, in spite of his grotesque taste in jewelry.

Dan decided to trust him. He cleared his throat, then said, “I appreciate it. I knew this street was rough, but I didn’t know it was _that_ rough.”

Jones shrugged and took a final drag off his cigarette, looking insouciant, before stomping it. “Hoxton ain’t shit, but most blocks ain’t so bad as this one.”

Dan stepped out of his car and introduced himself. “Dan,” he said, holding out a hand for Jones to shake.

The punk whistled. “No shit.” Dan shot him a quizzical look. “Just, I’m _Dan_ too. Well, my friends call me Danny, but... You can call me Jones.” He flashed another one of his dazzling smiles at Dan. 

“Cool,” Dan said, still only half-outside of the car. “Uh, do you mind if I bring a bag upstairs?”

“Might as well bring it all,” Jones said. “You don’t want the junkies squatting in the abandoned knitting factory down the block breaking in while you sleep.”

It took a couple of trips back and forth from the car to the loft, but soon Dan’s backseat was cleared of his worldly possessions, mostly clothing, records, and books, which were now strewn around Jones’s loft. It had been empty, then, cavernous; Jones hadn’t really built in anything except the toilet and a shitty shower, and the only furniture he had was a futon and a lumpy mattress on the floor. Except for the keyboard, turntables, and other music equipment crammed into the corner of the room, everything was made of concrete blocks and planks.

One such makeshift shelf was adorned with dolls and stuffed animals that looked like they’d been taken apart and put back together in some strange taxidermied nightmare. Dan stared awkwardly at the mutated, freakish perversions of familiar childhood toys and wondered if he’d made a mistake in agreeing to spend the night.

“It’s a bit of a work in progress,” Jones said, as though sensing Dan’s distress. He offered Dan a beer from the cardboard case next to the futon. It was warm, but it was beer, and Dan took a sip. By the time he’d finished it and Jones offered him another, his earlier apprehension evaporated and he relaxed enough to sit on the couch while Jones sprawled on the naked mattress and looked through Dan’s records.

“Cool, The Gits,” Jones said, slipping the album onto his turntable. Dan was quietly impressed by Jones’s knowledge of the obscure early-90s Seattle grunge band. “Always wondered why they never had a second album.” The music flared to life in a cacophony of sound, and Jones closed his eyes to nod along to the music, his long, shaggy hair rippling along to the bassline.

“Well, the lead singer got murdered,” Dan said. “Mia Zapata.”

“No _way_ ,” Jones breathed, eyes opening wide.

“Way,” Dan said. “It was a grisly murder, too.” He launched into the lurid details; Jones sat rapt, listening to Dan’s low, melodic voice describe the most heinous acts. Dan knew he was a gifted storyteller—he had a good sense of drama—but the way Jones’s expressions changed as he listened made Dan swell with the attention.“Took like a decade to find the guy who did it. She’s another member of the 27 club—it’s sad, she had a lot of talent. Like a cooler Courtney Love, but without the heroin.”

They stayed up all night, that first night, Jones playing records from Dan’s collection as Dan told stories about the songs, the bands, and the drugs behind the music, until they finally passed out on opposite sides of the couch as the sun crept over the horizon. And when he’d woken up, Jones had told Dan he could stay as long as he needed to.

Dan hadn’t known then that he’d never leave. And neither had Jones. At least, not until tonight.

He slammed his fist down on the counter, so hard it made his hand sting. It sounded unnaturally loud in the empty flat. The pain grounded Dan, anchoring him in the present, reminding him that Jones was _gone_ to Brighton for fuck’s sake, visiting his parents, who weren’t dead.

Dan sat in one of the stools and rested his elbows on the kitchen island, then rested his head on his forearms. He closed his eyes and breathed and breathed and breathed, and still there was no sign of Jones.

He stayed in a state of fugue for two whole days, moving only from the bed to the couch and back again and to lunge for his phone when it rang. It _did_ ring, but none of the calls were from Jones—actually, they were mostly Claire, or else spam. He ignored them both.

It was either late morning or early afternoon, and Dan was sitting on the ancient leather couch, staring out the window. The street was empty. The flat was empty. Dan was empty. His legs were starting to get restless, and he knew he’d have to get some exercise soon to stave off the spasms. Without Jones around to massage the ache away, Dan knew he’d be in anguish if he stayed in much longer, but he couldn’t quite force himself to get up just yet. 

He reached across the coffee table for his packet of fags. It was empty, and he scowled, tossing the packet back across the table. It skidded onto the floor, and Dan sighed. There was no use for it—he was going to have to head down to the corner shop and pick up another pack. 

Between Dan’s injuries and the moping around the flat pining after Jones, getting up off the couch took a hell of a lot more effort than it should have. And then once he’d gotten off the couch, he still had to change into clothing he hadn’t already worn for two days, brush his teeth and hair, and find his wallet before he was presentable enough to actually _leave_ the flat. 

It took him an hour, but he finally managed it. The sun was still high enough in the sky to make Dan squint (on the rare occasions he and Jones, both nocturnal by nature, left the flat together in the daylight hours, Jones never failed to tease Dan about the way the sun made his tiny eyes even tinier). He shook his head, banishing thoughts of Jones before he forgot what he’d left the flat for and ended up back at the Nailgun Arms with a whiskey and a lager on the bar in front of him.

The corner shop had remained the same since Dan had moved into the neighborhood. His favored brand of fags were slightly more expensive here than at the flashy, faux-organic shop a few blocks down, but Dan didn’t mind paying the extra pound for the experience. The corner shop was a relic, a holdover from Hoxton’s bad old days; the yellow-painted walls were dingy with grime and covered in faded advertisements at least five years out-of-date. There was a line of elderly men playing the lotto, but the clerk nodded at Dan and reached for a pack of Pall Malls without Dan ever having to ask. 

Dan tossed his money on the counter, exact change, which the clerk accepted without a word. Now _that,_ Dan thought as he cracked the seal on his packet of cigarettes, was the kind of service he didn’t mind paying for—quick, efficient, and completely silent.

He popped a cigarette between his lips, sparking his lighter and sucking down on the filter greedily. The nicotine calmed him, and the walk was working out the charley horse that had been threatening all morning. It was a lovely late-spring morning, sunny and breezy, not a cloud in the sky, and Dan meandered aimlessly along, not in any hurry to return to the empty flat just yet.

He wasn’t paying much attention to where he was going, just letting his feet do the work while his mind wandered. He walked on autopilot, until he paused to light another cigarette.

The church he was standing in front of seemed uncannily familiar. He stared at the prim white edifice, smoking and trying to remember what the hell was so important about the place... he certainly had never actually attended services at the place, had he? Maybe he’d attended a wedding here or something, already drunk before the reception, no doubt...

Suddenly, it clicked. Dan recognized it as the Lutheran church listed on the AA website. They had meetings every day at three and seven. Almost involuntarily, Dan checked his watch. It was five minutes after three. He could just drop in for a minute, and pop back out before anyone noticed him...

He took a final drag of his cigarette, then crushed it under his trainer. Just five minutes, he told himself. He didn’t have to stay.

Dan crossed the threshold.

The interior of the church was high-ceilinged and nearly as bright inside as it was outside. Unlike the dim, dusty churches of Dan’s youth, which had been cluttered with all manner of relics, the walls were white and bare except for a large wooden cross hanging over the altar. A woman with short hair and a cowl was straightening the hymnals in the pews when she noticed Dan standing awkwardly in the middle aisle. 

“Meeting’s down in the basement,” she said. “You’ll want to use the side door, in the alley on the right.” She hadn’t even asked why he was there, but she’d nailed it in one.

Dan mumbled his thanks and followed her instructions. It didn’t take him long to find the basement door; it was marked with a laminated schedule announcing which meetings were held on which days. A cursory glance at the schedule showed that Alcoholics Anonymous wasn’t the only Anonymous to meet here; apparently Narcotics Anonymous and Sex Addicts Anonymous also shared the space.

He double checked the sign, and then his watch, blood pounding in his ears. He could go, turn around now, and no one would ever have to know that Dan Ashcroft, Preacherman, had ever stepped inside a church, much less to attend a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Nothing was stopping him.

Nothing, that is, except for Jones’s words, stuck in his head on a loop. _I’m not gonna tell you you can’t drink. But I ain’t gonna stick around in a relationship where I always come second... You had the booze long before you ever met me.... But I ain’t gonna stick around..._

Dan eased the door open.

There were a dozen people, men and women, most of them Dan’s age or older, sitting on folding chairs. One woman, at least two decades older than Dan, was standing at the podium, telling a story about taking her nursing exams with a thermos full of cheap red wine. She paused, smiling at Dan as he took a seat by the door; her teeth were half-rotten from years of wine and neglect, and Dan startled. 

The others in the room were a little more subtle in their appraisal, glancing at Dan before turning their attention back to the speaker. Thankful that no one seemed to be watching him, Dan settled into one of the folding chairs closest to the exit.

The woman at the podium finished her story. A stout butch woman with a shaggy dyed-black haircut, who looked disarmingly like a female Jones only with more muscles and a shorter haircut, took the podium. “Thank you, Diane, for sharing your story with us.” She nodded at Diane, who took a seat near the front of the room, then gazed around the room to make eye contact with Dan, who promptly looked down at his trainers. They were stained and the rubber was beginning to peel off the soles. They looked like Dan felt—dirty and worn out.

Thankfully she moved on quickly, opening the floor to the next speaker, an older man with a shaved head and a shiny bowling shirt the same color red as his swollen alcoholic's nose. “My name is Richard, and I’m an alcoholic...”

The meeting went on for another hour; one alcoholic sharing their alcoholic tragedies after another. Dan was thankful when the butch woman with the punk-rock haistyle dismissed the meeting, thanking everyone for coming, both old and new. As soon as she mentioned “new”, the regulars all turned their heads and eyed Dan meaningfully, but he was already sneaking out the door and back onto the street.

Dan had sat through the whole meeting in silence. He hadn’t yet told his story, but he hadn’t had to. He saw himself in their stories all too clearly—the hangovers, missed deadlines, lost money. 

He lit another cigarette, pointedly ignoring the crowd of smokers gathered at the door and chatting amongst themselves, determinedly not-looking at them. One of the braver ones, the stout butch woman who'd led the meeting, stepped forward as if to approach him, but Dan hunched his shoulders and stared at the fag ends littering the sidewalk, and, sensing his reticence, she backed off. Bunch of alcoholics, Dan thought, sitting around talking about how much they wanted a drink. It was enough to drive you to drink. 

But, somehow, Dan didn’t. He walked back to the flat. Jones still wasn’t home, so Dan made himself a pot of coffee, extra-strong with too much sugar, the way Jones liked it, and held the hot liquid against his tongue, pretending that he could taste Jones in his mouth. It didn’t work, and he poured the rest of the coffee down the drain, wishing all the while that Jones would come home soon.


	3. iii.

The next day, Dan met Claire at their usual cafe for their rescheduled weekly lunch date. It was and wasn’t the same chipped-formica workman’s cafe that had been there before Dan’s accident—the place had been bought up by some hipsters who banned smoking unless you were sitting out on the patio, but he had to admit that the food was better. It was twice as expensive, but twice as good, and he figured that you got what you paid for, at least.

Claire was running late, or else Dan was early—he wasn’t sure. He’d left the flat earlier than he’d had to, unable to stand the emptiness. Somehow, it was worse than when Jones left town for a gig; at least then, Dan knew when he’d be coming back. That he _would_ be coming back. He sat and sipped his tea, wishing it were something stronger. 

“You look like shit,” Claire said, plopping down on the seat across from him, jolting Dan from his thoughts.

“The family resemblance is strong,” Dan shot back.

Claire rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re hungover again.”

Dan shook his head. 

“You and Jones kiss and make up?” Claire opened her purse and extricated her cigarettes, fitting one between her lips and lighting it.

“That’s the thing,” Dan said. “He went to Brighton.”

“The fuck is Jones doing in Brighton?”

“He’s staying with his parents. Said he needed some time away. Away from—me.”

Claire offered the packet to Dan, who accepted gratefully. “You fucked up, Dan.”

Dan exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Yeah.” His voice came out small and broken.

“You know when he’s coming back?”

Dan shook his head.

“What are you gonna do, Danny?” Claire rarely used the nickname, only when she was extremely disappointed in him.

“He didn’t _say_ ,” Dan said, staring at the tip of his cigarette. His voice did that cracking thing again. 

“You drinking?” Claire said quietly.

“I don’t want to,” Dan admitted. He didn’t know if that was enough.

Claire ground out her cigarette and opened her menu. “Look, Dan, I’ve been telling you your whole life to get therapy,” Claire said. “Maybe it's about time you did that?”

Dan scowled. After the DTs had cleared, the hospital had sent some wanker to his room who insisted that Dan was suicidal, no matter how many times Dan insisted that while he _had_ jumped out of the window, the whole almost-dying thing had been an accident. Sure, Dan hated himself, he was certainly self-destructive, and he did _want_ to die sometimes, usually when Jonnaton assigned him some degrading article to write or Barley had been up his ass again, but he wasn’t _suicidal_.

No matter how many times he said it, though, the crusty old doctor had refused to listen to him. So eventually, Dan refused to talk to him anymore, and since then, he’d curled his lip at the mention of therapy.

But he couldn’t deny that the urge to drink was getting stronger by the day. The thirst was so much worse, so much more acute, since his recent slip. Now the taste of scotch was no longer a wisp of memory, it was vivid, multi-dimensional, smoky, earthy, and smooth.

Dan yanked on his moustache. The hairs were a little long and tickled his upper lip constantly, but trimming it seemed like an insurmountable amount of effort.

Claire recognized the gesture from his drinking days. She shot him a knowing look.

Dan filched another of her cigarettes. He knew what he looked like. He’d gained another two stone since coming home from the hospital, but he hadn’t yet gotten around to buying new clothes, and _those_ clothes had been starting to get snug by the time that he’d been admitted. His hair had grown out to his shoulders, and his beard was starting to get a little bit too long to be anything but hobo-chic. 

Knowing that she wouldn’t get any kind of answer from him, Claire let the topic go. “You read that new proposal I sent you?”

“Proposal?”

Claire rolled her eyes. “It’s for the film festival, Dan! They’re giving a 10,000 pound grant to an aspiring female documentary filmmaker. Jesus, do you ever check your email?”

Dan didn’t bother answering. They both knew the answer to that.

It just so happened that Dan’s lunch with Claire ended a few minutes before three. It just so happened that Dan had to walk past the Lutheran church to get back to the House of Jones, and as he did, Claire’s voice rang in his head: _I’ve been telling you to get therapy your whole life. Maybe you should do something about that._

It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go, except back to the House of Jones, which was just a house without Jones in it. Dan ducked into the alley and opened the basement door.

Dan came back the next day, and the day after that. He wasn’t sure why, other than that it was something to do to fill the hours where Jones used to be but wasn’t. 

They weren’t the kind of couple to spend every moment together—Jones had his job at the Stanley Knives, and he DJ’d almost every weekend, and Dan had his writing and his physical therapy. Dan had never minded—he’d never _missed_ Jones. Jones had his own life, but in his absence, Dan was realizing how little about Jones’s life he really _knew_. Hell, he hadn’t even known that Jones had parents, much less the kind of parents who retired to a place like Brighton. 

He eased his computer off his lap—it wasn’t like he’d gotten much writing done, or any really—and reached for his phone. He pulled up Jones’s number, then hesitated. Surely if Jones wanted to talk to him, he would have called, or texted, or given _some_ sign that he wanted to hear from Dan. 

But a niggling doubt he couldn’t shake reminded Dan that _he’d_ been the one to fuck things up. He’d been the one to get drunk and call Jones a failure because he couldn’t stand to admit that _he_ was the failure—Dan was a writer who hadn’t written a damn thing in over a year, whereas Jones had gigs almost every weekend and travelled for festivals a few times a year. If Dan had been the one to fuck things up, perhaps he’d have to be the one to _un_ fuck it....

Dan closed his eyes and hit the call button. The phone rang, and rang, and rang, and just before Dan was about to hang up and sulk, Jones picked up.

“Wotcher, Dan?” 

Dan cleared his throat. He hadn’t actually had anything to say, which now seemed like an unfortunate oversight. “Hey, Jones.” Jones didn’t respond; even on the other end of the line, Dan could hear him waiting for Dan to say something else, something meaningful, maybe even apologize. “How’s Brighton?”

“Sunny,” Jones said. “My mum dragged me to the beach yesterday; I’m red as a boiled crab. I think I might actually be allergic to the sun.”

Dan chuckled before he could stop himself. He couldn’t imagine Jones sitting on a beach in broad daylight, much less with his mum. “Your parents, how are they?” Dan asked, feeling like he ought to, so Jones would know that he hadn’t forgotten about Jones’s parents. That he’d been listening, even if he hadn’t always been so good at listening before.

“They’re fine,” Jones said. “Even older than I remembered, and they’ve been old my whole life.”

“Oh?” Dan asked, curious.

Jones wasn’t very forthcoming. He rarely ever talked about himself, and talked about his past even less often. So Dan was surprised when Jones answered. “Yeah, my mum turned 74 on Friday. And my da’ll be 80 in December.”

Dan whistled. Even his own parents weren’t so old, and he was ten years older than Jones, who’d turned 30 in May. 

“But they’re still the same as I remembered,” Jones said. “They got more animals than ever. My da just rescued another parrot—his third. Nasty old bugger. Swears like a goddamned sailor.”

“Sounds like the two of you have lots in common,” Dan quipped, and Jones burst out laughing. He had a unique laugh, somewhere between the braying of a donkey and an autistic child. Dan couldn’t help cracking a grin. 

“Yeah, I taught him a few new ones,” Jones agreed. His voice sounded familiar and fond, and made Dan hopeful—he wasn’t sure where they stood, if Jones wanted to pick up where they’d left off before Dan had gotten drunk again. Dan knew what he wanted, but Jones hadn’t called, hadn’t texted, hadn’t told Dan what he _wanted._

Maybe that had been the problem all along. Jones never _said_ , and Dan never _asked_. 

Jones hummed a soft melody that beat in the space between them, counterpoint to the cadence ofDan’s breath. “What about you?” Jones asked. “What’ve you been doing?”

“Nothing,” Dan said. “Been going on a lot of walks.” He didn’t mention that he walked to and from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings daily. He wasn’t ready to tell Jones. Hell, he hadn’t even told Claire, and she’d been the one to tell him to go. Not that he was ashamed, or embarrassed—well, maybe a little, but his sobriety still seemed like such a fragile thing. He tasted the whiskey on his tongue, felt the beer tickling against his moustache all the time. 

Dan winced, inhaling sharply. If he could give in after 540 days, he could give in after 7. 

Jones, who had always been more attuned to Dan’s needs than Dan himself, seemed to know Dan was uncomfortable, even though he wasn’t there to see Dan wince. “Back’s not bothering you, is it?”

Dan shook his head. “No.” He was in pain, but it wasn’t his leg that was aching, nor his back. Not anymore than usual, at least. No. His heart hurt the worst of all. He wanted to tell Jones that, but everything he could say seemed too cliche, too full of sap, to explain properly.

“You sure?” Jones sounded like he didn’t believe him. Dan didn’t blame him. 

“I...” Dan started, then swallowed. “I think the squat is haunted.”

Jones laughed, but Dan cut him off. “You’re not here, but I... I feel you all the time.” His hand tightened around the phone. “When are you coming home, Jones?” His voice broke around the words.

Now it was Jones’s turn to breathe into the receiver. “Soon, Dan, soon,” he said, but he didn’t say _when_. 

A woman’s voice crackled over the line, too indistinct for Dan to make out the words. Jones must have put the phone down; Dan could hear him responding to the woman. “Yeah, Mum, gimme a minute, I’ll be down soon...” The line clicked, and Jones said, “Dan? I gotta go.”

Dan wanted to ask him to stay. Instead, he swallowed. “Goodnight, Jones.”

“‘Night, Dan,” Jones said, and then the line went dead.

Dan stroked his moustache, wishing he had a drink. He was halfway down the stairs before he realized he’d been intending to walk to the Nailgun Arms on autopilot. He clutched the railing. Alcohol had always made him feel better—until it started making him feel worse. He’d dealt with the feeling by drinking more. He’d drink and drink and drink until he couldn’t feel anything, but then he’d wake up with a hangover, and the only way to make it stop was to drink more.

Then he’d fallen out the window, broken his hip and his back, and stopped drinking. But even sober, he’d been... numb. Perhaps he’d been so used to not feeling anything by then that he’d forgotten _how._

And maybe Dan felt like shit right now, but at least he was feeling _something._

Huh. 

He pivoted on the stairs, nearly losing his balance. The sudden change of direction made him feel woozy. When was the last time he’d eaten something...? He’d eaten the last of Jones’s sugary cereal, which had already gone stale, that morning. And then, as hard as he wracked his brains, he couldn’t remember having eaten anything else.

Dan headed back upstairs to forage in the kitchen. The cupboards were bare, save for the industrial-sized packets of coffee and sugar. Jones usually did the shopping, ostensibly so Dan didn’t have to walk back from the market laden down with bags and risk aggravating his injuries, but Dan suspected that Jones didn’t trust him not to spend the grocery money on booze. 

The ensuing rush of shame made Dan dizzy. He was a 40-year-old man who couldn’t even be trusted to go to the grocery store by himself.... 

Well. There would be time for that tomorrow. For the time being, however, Dan dialed the local Chinese. When it arrived half an hour later, he wolfed down the meal, not even a grain of rice left over. 

Strangely enough, just feeding himself made him feel better. Strange how such a simple thing could calm the awful, twisting feeling inside. He’d have to remember to do it regularly.

Dan finished putting his groceries into the fridge—he’d managed to complete his shopping first thing after waking up, even though the market had been too bright and too full of people and unfamiliar products—what the hell was a bok choy, and what were you supposed to do with it? Dan had no idea, but he’d bought two, because he’d panicked while looking at the vegetables and grabbed the first green thing he’d seen.

Glancing at the clock (one of Jones’s nightmare art projects with Jones’s face on the clockface), Dan noticed it was quarter to three. He’d have to hoof it if he wanted to make his meeting on time... but the trip to the market had exhausted him. Maybe he could skip a day...

He wandered to the bedroom, fully intending to crawl into bed. He yanked off his shirt and opened a dresser drawer, rifling through the neon riot of Jones’s clothing to find something he could wear to bed without stretching it out enough that Jones would notice. He settled on a faded, ancient Dead Kennedys tee with the arms cut off; it was one of Jones’s favorites, and had been worn so often that it was shapeless and coming apart at the seams. Jones loved it, and Dan loved it on him, and Jones wasn’t here, but maybe sleeping with Jones’s shirt on would be close enough. 

Dan pulled the shirt on and stared at himself in the mirror. It had been a long time since he’d really looked at himself—Jones’s shirt was ridiculously small on him, as expected, showing several inches of his stomach just above the waistband of his jeans, but Dan was caught off guard at how much his face had changed since the last time he’d bothered. His beard was longer, the creases on his forehead and around his eyes deeper, though his skin was clearer; it no longer had the greyish cast it had taken on from decades of hard drinking. He watched as his reflection’s mouth opened, hearing himself say “My name is Dan, and I’m an alcoholic” before realizing he’d said it.

Dan’s reflection stared back at him. He was surprised that his face remained the same—he’d expected the words to somehow change him, but they hadn’t. They were just words. He tried again. “My name is Dan, and I’m an alcoholic. It has been eight days since my last drink.” 

Still nothing. 

Dan shut the drawer. His pills were staring back at him, the vials all lined up in a row on top of the dresser, emblazoned with labels reading _diazepam, oxcarbenzone, oxycodone._ He shoved them to the floor.

There was nowhere to hide, no way to get away from himself that didn’t involve getting fucked up. Dan was surprised to realize he was tired of hiding. He’d hidden from himself for decades, with each swallow of whiskey, with each pill someone had passed him at the club. 

He pulled his shirt back on, without even bothering to remove Jones’s Dead Kennedys tee. Dan went back to the meeting that afternoon, then the next, then the one after that.

Several days passed in a ritual of routines—Dan would wake up, brew tea, feed himself, then sit in front of his computer not-writing until it was time for his meeting. He’d go to the meeting, sitting in silence as he listened to the other drunks talk about their sorry drunken lives, drinking too much coffee while he tried to ignore the uncomfortable resemblance between their lives and his own. Afterwards, he’d smoke a cigarette, standing six feet apart from the crowd of smokers who lingered by the door, hoping his awkward posture and general discomfort would keep anyone from daring to talk to him. Then he’d go back home, stare at his computer some more, maybe try to figure out how the hell to cook bok choy or chicken without rendering it inedible or giving himself food poisoning. Usually he'd call Jones in the evenings to listen to him show what terrible thing he’d taught the parrot to say, or reminisce about the bad old days and all the stupid shit they’d done when they were still young and reckless and Dan’s back hadn’t yet been broken in three places. 

Sometimes Jones sent pictures: either blurry phone pics of faded photographs from his youth, or snaps of his father with a parrot perched on each shoulder, and one on his bald head, as he read the newspaper, or else his mum lying in a pile of massive dogs. Dan was surprised that Jones’s parents were so... normal. They had the look of a couple that had been together for so long that they’d started to resemble one another; they both looked like retired geography teachers (mostly, Jones informed him, because they were). 

He and Jones were talking more than they had in the entire decade Dan had spent sleeping on Jones’s couch, and Dan was surprised at how easily conversation came when they weren’t in the same room.

Every night, Dan would ask when Jones was coming home, and Jones would pause, and say _soon_ , though he never said when that might be. And then Jones would make some excuse to get off the phone, and Dan would sit and sulk and not drink until he fell asleep.

Each day, Dan felt a little less miserable than he had the day before. He missed it, a little bit—he knew how to be miserable; it was comfortable. He couldn’t remember ever not being sad and angry, and the occasional flashes of happiness—such as the time he’d managed to roast a chicken without burning it, or laughing along with some silly story Jones told about growing up alongside a veritable menagerie of strays, caught him off guard. 

He wondered if Jones missed him, the same way he missed Jones, but he could never figure out how to ask—sometimes, he’d hear something in Jones’s voice that sounded almost like longing. Dan understood a little about that: the big bed with the fancy mattress was too cold and empty without Jones there, and Dan tossed and turned at night. He tried his best to arrange his pillows properly, but he could never quite get comfortable; Jones had always been better at knowing what Dan needed than Dan knew himself. 

Dan was trying. After forty fucking miserable years of being alive, he _should_ have some idea how to take care of himself. It had just taken Jones leaving to figure out _how_.

Of course, nothing in Dan’s life ever stayed peaceful for long. The very next day, after sneaking out for a smoke just before the facilitator called the group together for the closing prayer, none other than Nathan Barley, the bane of Dan’s existence, walked past. 

Dan turned, suddenly engrossed in the bulletin board announcing the schedule of services, hoping Barley wouldn’t recognize him. 

Too late. Barley honed in on him like a bloodhound on a particularly bloody scent. “Ashcroft! Preacherman!”

Dan crushed his fag end under his shoe and turned to Barley and snarled. Undaunted, Barley attempted to sling an arm over Dan’s shoulder. Dan shrugged him off brusquely, but Barley nattered on. “What are you doing at a church? I mean, I knew you were a Preacherman, but I didn’t think you were _that_ kind of preacherman...”

Dan’s first instinct was to lie. But for some reason, he decided to tell the truth instead. “Barley, you twit, I haven’t joined the seminary.” He sneered. “I’m here for the meeting.”

Barley, using all of his limited brainpower, looked confused. “What meeting? You writing an article or something about Jesus?”

“The _Alcoholics Anonymous_ meeting,” Dan said. “Every afternoon at three in the basement conference room.”

“Oh, so you’ve quit drinking?” Barley said, looking dumbfounded, though Dan supposed that was just his normal look. “Well bum! Joining the dry side. Good for you, Preach!” He seemed about to try and hug Dan again, and Dan cased the area for an escape.

Luckily, the meeting must have adjourned, because a crowd of his fellow alcoholics wandered out of the alley, passing a lighter around to spark the cigarettes between their lips.

Dan barged over into the crowd of smokers huddled by the door, Barley in hot pursuit. All five of them looked at Dan questioningly. He supposed he could understand their confusion—he’d been attending meetings every day for a week, but had yet to speak or even acknowledge his fellow alcoholics. Nevermind that. Dan cowered behind Robin, the butch lesbian who looked like a shorter, more muscular version of Jones, and pleaded, “You have to save me.”

Robin looked at Dan, cowering behind her 5’5” frame, and back at Barley, cracked her knuckles and nodded. “What’re you doing, mate?” she bellowed, the menace in her voice nearly making Dan jump. The rest of the group members immediately formed a line between Dan and Nathan Barley.

Barley looked at Dan with a silent plea to call off the droogs. “Just—talking to an old friend of mine.”

Robin nodded to the rest of the group members, who swarmed closer.

“Me and the Preacherman go way back,” Barley whimpered.

Robin sneered. “Yeah? Well, I suggest you go all the way to where you came from.”

Barley sniveled, the bastard, and took a cautious step backward. “Guess I’ll see you around, Preach.”

“I told you, that’s not my name!” Dan shouted, feeling more confident now that Robin had reduced Barley to a snivelling mess. He’d always wanted to put Barley in his place, but it had been harder to do when he’d been holding Claire’s movie hostage by the pursestrings. “My name is Dan!”

Barley froze in place. 

“Call me Dan!” Dan repeated. “Say it!”

“You heard the man,” Robin said, punching a fist into her palm with a cracking sound.

“Uh, bye, Dan!” Barley screeched, and then ran off.

Once Barley was out of sight, Robin turned to Dan. “What the hell was that about?”

“Just some twat I used to know,” Dan said.

Robin’s face softened, and she nodded. “Well, now that that’s settled, why don’t you join us for coffee, _Dan_?” The way she emphasized his name made Dan cringe with embarrassment like a schoolchild caught getting bullied on the playground.

“There’s a place up the street that makes a good cuppa,” another one of his fellow alcoholics, a large man with a bald head who’d used to mix vodka and Coca Cola so he could drink on the job, added.

The others looked at Dan expectantly. Dan shrugged. “Why not?”. After all, they’d saved him from Barley. It was the least he could do. 

Jittery and overcaffienated (what was it about dry alcoholics and coffee, Dan wondered), Dan stood at the kitchen island, munching on tinned beans and toast. He’d actually enjoyed himself that afternoon—his fellow alcoholics weren’t so bad, when they weren’t talking about drinking all the time.

At the coffee shop, he’d gotten to know his fellow alcoholics beyond their alcoholism for the first time: Robin was caught in the middle of a lesbian drama. Diane liked knitting. Richard, the heavyset balding man who’d used to drink red wine in Coca-Cola, worked as a salesman at an appliance shop, and did hilarious, scathing impressions of his worst customers. They might have been drunks, but at least they weren’t _idiots._

Dan wasn’t drinking, and he wasn’t writing either. He wondered where that left him. 

He was so lost in thought that he almost didn’t notice his mobile vibrating in his pocket.

His first instinct was to ignore it—it was probably Claire, calling to nag him about reading her proposal again—but he reluctantly checked his mobile. When he saw the name _Jones_ on the display, he almost dropped the phone.

Somehow, he managed to steady himself enough to pick up the call. “Hello?”

“Dan!” Jones shouted into the phone. “Check it out—I taught the parrot a new curse!”

A horrible screeching sound crackled over the line. “You’re shit! You’re shit! You’re shit!”

Jones laughed his unmistakable laugh, the parrot mimicking the sound perfectly. It was uncanny, and twice as infectious, and Dan couldn’t help but laugh along with Jones and his madcap parrot.

“Your parents must be so proud,” Dan wheezed out, just as an elderly man with a hoarse smoker’s voice shouted, “Daniel Jones, stop encouraging the bastard!”, which only made Dan laugh harder.

“That bird’s fuckin’ _mental_ ,” Jones said, when Dan had finally stopped laughing. “I’m recording him, yeah? Gonna sample him in my next mix. I already got a name for it: ‘Asshole Parrot’.”

“That’s rather... evocative,” Dan said, wiping the tears from his eyes. Damn, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so hard he _cried._

“That parrot’s gonna be the next big thing on the scene,” Jones agreed. 

Dan asked a question that he’d been wondering about since their last phone call. “Jones, why does your dad have three parrots?”

Jones hummed. “He likes ‘em, I guess. We always had birds when I was a nipper, mostly budgies. Some finches. I guess the old flat was too small for a parrot, but now that they have the space... there’s more animals ‘n _ever_.”

Something about the way Jones emphasized the word _ever_ piqued Dan’s curiosity. He shoved the rest of his toast into his mouth, swallowing loudly. “More animals than ever?”

“Not just birds, neither,” Jones admitted. “We had cats, ‘n dogs, ‘n more gerbils ‘n I could count. My mum and dad were always taking in strays.”

Dan’s hand tightened around his phone as he remembered the night Jones had rescued him off the street. _‘M just a bloke, sayin’ you don’t gotta sleep on the street tonight if you don’t wanna._ Maybe Jones had inherited something from his parents, after all.

“I had a cat, once,” Jones continued. “Ziggy Stardust. She was a terror.” 

“She?”

“Oh, she was a she alright. Mean as hell—I saw her fight off more than one tom.” Jones’s voice sounded echoey, as though he’d pulled the phone away from his face. “Check your text messages, yeah?”

Dan opened the text. It was a grainy picture of a gangly boy, about ten years old, sitting with a massive tabby cat in his lap. The boy was unmistakably Jones—his distinctive nose gave it away, though Dan had to admit that Jones had certainly grown into his features as he aged. He’d been all nose as a kid. Dan noticed the cat had two different color eyes—one gold and one a disarmingly bright blue, almost as blue as Jones’s own. “Bowie would have approved.”

“I like to think so.” Jones’s voice was fond. “Kinda reminds me of you, to be honest. I found you both on the street—”

“Jones—”

“And she never let many people come close. If they tried, she gave them the claw.” Jones chuckled playfully. “But she loved me, you know. And _only_ me. She’d curl up right beside my belly, snoring up a storm.” He paused, voice going low. “Just like you.”

All Dan could think to say was, “You had a cat?” Something about Jones was almost feral—he seemed more like the type to have been raised by wild cats, not the other way around.

“We had tons of cats—like I said, my parents were big on taking in strays—but Ziggy was the only one that was all mine,” Jones said. Dan’s phone pinged with another text—this time, a picture of a young, disarmingly blonde Jones sleeping while the massive, mean-looking cat perched on his head, looking like she was about to swipe whoever had dared take the picture. 

“What happened to her?”

“She died,” Jones said, matter-of-factly. The laughter was gone from his voice.

“There’s more to it than that, Jones,” Dan prodded.

Jones let out a pained sigh. It was clear to Dan that he didn’t want to talk about it, and Dan wished that Jones were back home so he could reach out and put a hand on Jones’s shoulder to calm him. Jones took another breath, continuing. “Once I took her in, I tried to make her an inside cat. But she remembered life in the alley, and she’d sneak out. But she always came back. That is, until our neighbors got a dog. That day she got out, and she never came back, though I did find her collar and part of her tail in the neighbor’s garden.”

“Jonesy—” the nickname spilled out of Dan from some subconscious place, “I’m sorry.”

“Ziggy was a good cat,” Jones said. “I loved her. More’n anything.” He paused; somewhere in the house a bird shrieked. “My parents, they were old when they had me. Maybe they were just too old for kids by the time I was born. They were always taking in strays, yeah? We had cats and dogs and rabbits and budgies, all of ‘em rescues. And they loved those animals—they doted on them, threw birthday parties for the dogs, but they never remembered to throw a birthday for _me_.”

This was more than Jones had said about his past in the ten years Dan had known him. Dan was reeling from the knowledge. “Maybe we should get one,” Dan said.

“A birthday party?”

“No, a cat, you twit.”

A thoughtful silence lingered between them, then Jones laughed. Dan could almost see him tossing his head back as he laughed, and for a moment, it was almost like it had been before Dan came home drunk.

“What’s so funny?”

“I never thought of you as a cat person before,” Jones said. “Dunno why. ‘S obvious.” 

“Funny,” Dan said, eyes closed, “I never would have pegged you for one, either.”

He couldn’t see the smile on Jones’s face, but he heard it when he spoke, the lisp Jones got when his top lip was stretched tight from grinning. “Funny, that.” 

The next day, Dan went to the meeting early. He’d never quite managed to arrive on time before, always stumbling in just as the facilitator closed the opening prayer, but after having gotten coffee with the crew yesterday, he figured it would be rude to be late again. The room was empty, save for Robin, who was fussing over the snack table, laying out a tray of pastries. 

“Dan!” she said, smiling widely. “Gimme a hand with the coffee, will you?”

Dan fumbled with the coffeemaker, at a loss for what he was supposed to do with it. It was one of those large samovars, far too complicated for him to figure out just by looking at it. 

Robin noticed his confusion. “Need a hand?”

“Sorry,” Dan apologized. “I’m really more of a tea person, usually.”

Robin laughed. “Ah, thought you looked a little tweaked out after coffee yesterday. You definitely haven’t been sober very long, then.” She reached over and unlatched the samovar, removing the basket and filling it with fresh grounds. “Don’t worry, you’ll develop a taste for it in time.”

“No,” Dan admitted. “Thirteen days.”

Robin whistled. “Thirteen days, huh?”

“But it was eighteen months before that,” Dan added, because it seemed important that she know.

“Damn,” Robin said, laying out a selection of individually-packaged creamer, “that’s rough.”

Dan shoved his hands in his pockets awkwardly.

“But it’s easier, with a good meeting,” Robin said. “If you manage to make it through the night, you’ll get your 14-day tomorrow.” She eyed him closely, as if assessing whether he’d be able to make it or not.

Dan was saved from having to respond by the door opening. A couple of chavs sulked in, looking like they’d rather be anywhere else.

“Yo, dis the meeting?” one of them said.

“Our parole officer told us we had t’find a meeting, yeah?” his companion said.

Robin went over to introduce herself to the newcomers, who were both, Dan was confident, total _idiots._

The two chavs proved him right. They snickered through the opening prayer—sure, Dan rolled his eyes and wanted to choke every time someone said the word “God”, but at least he kept it to himself. 

The two _idiots_ whispered drivel between themselves through the entire opening ritual. Robin, who was today’s facilitator, ignored them, but Dan could tell that she was was running short on patience. “Listen up, yeah? We’re moving on to the daily meditation. Page 219 of the Daily Affirmations. We got a volunteer for the reading?”

Richard raised his hand. “Another great dividend we receive from confiding our defects to another is humility, a word often misunderstood... It amounts to a clear recognition of what and what we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be.”

“Anyone got anything they’d like to add to that?” Robin asked. “Some commentary or something about how humility relates to your recovery? Don’t be shy,” she cackled, “we’re all alcoholics here.”

The chavs sniggered. Dan glared at them, directing every ounce of derision he felt in their general direction. Out of spite for them, Dan spoke. “My name is Dan, and I’m an alcoholic,” he said. He’d practiced the words aloud more times than he could count, but it was the first time he’d said them to a roomful of people; they still felt strange on his tongue. “It has been thirteen days since my last drink.”

It was like ripping off a bandaid. As soon as he started talking, he found he couldn’t stop. It all came out—Barley, the preacher costume, the window, the hospital, the pills, Jones, his relapse, Jones leaving. When he was finished, the room was silent—everyone was looking at him. 

“Thank you, Dan,” Robin said quietly, and Dan flushed, his ears burning. 

The room erupted with commiseration, but Dan couldn’t make sense of anything anyone said over the pounding in his ears. He might have practiced aloud, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, but it had been the first time he’d said it to anyone else, much less an entire roomful of people. 

He spent the meeting in a daze, still stunned that he’d said anything at all, much less spewed his whole life story out for everyone to hear. Even when Robin dismissed the meeting, he could barely push himself to his feet and walk out the door without stumbling like, well, a drunk.

Finally outside, he leaned against the wall, shoving a cigarette between his lips and sucking down a lungful of smoke. The nicotine helped him steady himself.

Someone nudged his shoulder. “We’re heading to the cafe.” It was Richard. “You coming?”

Dan shook his head. “Sorry, I’ve already had enough caffeine today.”

“Well, maybe next time,” Diane chimed in. The group crossed the street, but Robin stayed behind. 

“That’s quite a war story you had there,” Robin said softly. 

“Yeah,” Dan agreed, lighting another cigarette.

“You know,” Robin said, “I’m available to sponsor, if you think you’re ready.”

Dan nodded. Robin scrawled something on a scrap of paper. “My number, if you need it,” she said, shoving the scrap into his hand, then dove out between cars to join the rest of the group at the cafe across the street.

Dan shoved the paper into his pocket. He had a feeling it might come in handy.


	4. iv.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for a trigger warning.

Dan stared at the screen. The battery on the laptop was at 15% and rapidly depleting. He’d sat here all afternoon, and, as usual, had failed to complete even a single sentence.

Abruptly, Dan closed the Word document, feeling sick to his stomach. It was well past midnight, and he’d accomplished nothing since he’d come home from his meeting, nothing except for smoking an entire pack of cigarettes and drinking entirely too many cups of coffee. He was beginning to suspect that Robin had been right about the relationship between sobriety and coffee, though if he were being honest with himself, it probably had to do with missing Jones—Dan’s coffee intake had increased with every day Jones stayed gone. 

He scrolled through his email account, deleting dozens of ads and spam. The junk tended to pile up more quickly than he could delete it, much less read it; it was all junk. He’d gotten a few legitimate emails, offers of work, when word had gotten out that he’d left SugaRape, but he’d ignored them all. Eventually, the offers stopped coming. 

Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like Dan was writing anyway. Had he bothered to follow up, he would no doubt have been fired by now.

In the middle of his deleting spree, an email from Claire came up, simply titled  _ Proposal....? _ Normally, he would have deleted it without a second thought, but for some reason, boredom maybe, Dan decided to open it.

_ I don’t know why I’m bothering to send this to you—it’s not like you ever read any of my emails. Anyway, you’re still the best writer I know even if you are a self-centered arsehole. So it’d mean a lot to me if you’d let me know what you think about it, preferably before midnight on the 31st, considering that’s when the grant I’m applying for is due. _

He opened the attachment and skimmed over it. The proposal was pretty good, for a documentary about militant antifascists—Claire seemed to believe that their radical ideology could cure a world sinking deeper and deeper into craven materialism. Dan was pretty sure that a capitalistic, celebrity-obsessed society such as their own would inevitably collapse under the weight of its own nihilistic decadence, but Claire seemed convinced that not only could the world be saved, it was worth saving.

Poor girl. She was still too idealistic by far. Shouldn’t someone be at least a little bit jaded by the time they hit their 35th birthday? Though admittedly it had happened for Dan much earlier than that. He’d always been too precocious for his own good. 

He sighed and turned his attention back to Claire’s proposal. Her optimism aside, the premise was solid, and Claire made a strong case for her antifascists. Certainly it needed a bit of fine-tuning: Claire tended to write too much, throwing as many details as she could into every paragraph, many of them redundant. She could cut a line here, pare down a paragraph there, and it would read much more clearly. All she had to do was narrow her vision a bit, and she’d have a pretty compelling proposal... 

Dan made some mental notes as he read, not really sure  _ why _ he was doing it. After all, Claire had been after him for years to read her proposals and help her write her specs, and he’d never bothered, before.

Well, in Dan’s defense, he’d spend the last two decades of his life either so far down a pint glass or so far up his own arse he couldn’t be bothered to see past his own misery. 

He’d quit drinking before, but still hadn’t been able to get far enough out of his own head to bother with helping Claire, no matter how many times she’d asked. He’d quit before, but somehow, he’d never managed to  _ stay _ quit. Dan didn’t know how he knew it, but this time—this time was different. 

He still missed it. He probably always would. He’d drunk because he was happy, because he was sad, because he’d been anxious or excited or disappointed. He’d drunk to celebrate his success and commiserate his failures. Alcohol had kept him company through lost friendships and bad breakups. When he’d hit rock bottom, near the end of his tenure at SugaRape, he’d been single, broke, and suffering from such a severe case of writer’s block that Jonatton Yeah? (god, how Dan had hated that arsehole of an editor) had had to write half of his features for him. Dan had been drunk and desperate enough that he’d allowed Barley to dress him up in a preacher costume and let a photographer take pictures of him  _ pissing _ in exchange for a check.

Every time he’d tried to quit, the booze had left a hole in his life—almost the size of his entire life. The eighteen sober months before his relapse, he’d learned to fill the hole the booze had left behind with Jones.

But now Jones wasn’t here, and Dan found he didn’t want to fill the hole he’d left behind with beer and whiskey. He couldn’t even  _ write _ to fill it up. Maybe it was time to fill in his own empty spaces. 

The idea was daunting—Dan had never been good at being on his own. The last thirteen days had been the longest Dan had ever gone without finding a bottle to drink, a story to write, a hole to fuck, anything so he didn’t have to be  _ alone _ .

He reached into his pocket. The piece of paper Robin had written her number on was still there, crumpled into a ball. He smoothed it out, squinting to decipher the scrawl. When he’d finally memorized the number, he sent a text:  _ Hey. It’s Dan. _

Robin didn’t respond right away, so Dan sent another. _ How does this whole sponsor thing work? _

His phone pinged with a response only a few minutes later.  _ It’s easy. You call me when you’re thinking about drinking, and I give you some tasks to help to hold you accountable and keep your mind off the booze.  _

_ How do you do that? _ Dan typed back.

_ Well, for starters, you’re in charge of the coffee tomorrow. Bring cake—it’s Richard’s 2-year anniversary. _

_ Cake? _ Dan asked.

_ Yeah, the annual milestones are like your sober birthday. Cake is necessary, _ Robin sent back.  _ He likes chocolate and strawberries. Don’t be late. _

Dan stopped at the cafe on his way to the meeting, carefully balancing the cake in its cardboard box. He hadn’t been sure whether Richard would prefer a chocolate cake or a strawberry cake, so he’d been relieved to discover that they sold a chocolate-strawberry cake, saving him from having to make a decision. 

He managed to carry the cake all the way to the meeting without dropping, shaking, or otherwise abusing it, and Dan was feeling pretty proud of himself. He might actually complete his first task as a sponsee without having it go horribly, horribly wrong.

But since he was Dan Ashcroft, things never went as easy as all that. Because as soon as he opened the door to the basement meeting room, he was greeted by a familiar, if unwelcome, face: Nathan Barley sprawled wide-legged in one of the folding chairs.

Dan took a double-take, promptly tripping on a chair leg. The cake box flew from his hands and crashed to the floor, Dan just a split-second behind. 

Barley rushed over to help Dan up, but Dan shrugged him off, glaring murderously at the man. “Don’t touch me,” he snapped. 

“Sorry, Dan, was just trying to help,” Barley said, shrugging.

Dan pulled himself to his feet slowly. His bad hip was already aching from the fall—he’d be feeling that fall for the next week at  _ least. _ “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you to fuck off.”

“Now, Dan,” Robin said, “be kind to Nathan. This is his first meeting.”

“My name is Nathan, and I’m an alcoholic,” Nathan said with a wink.

Dan shook his head. “No, no you’re not.” He advanced toward Nathan. “You’re a trust-fund pisser who’s only doing this because you want to be me...”

“Now Dan,” Robin admonished, getting in between him and Barley, “AA is for anyone who has a sincere desire to stop drinking and regain control of their lives.”

“That twit Barley isn’t interested in getting sober! I told you, he’s only doing this because he wants to copy me—that’s all he’s ever done, is copy me—”

“Isn’t that a good thing, though, Dan?” Robin asked, dropping the punk growl for a softer, more plaintive tone. “You’re Nathan’s inspiration for getting sober. That’s a wonderful gift you’ve given him.”

Dan wasn’t so sure about that. For one, he still wanted to punch Barley’s face in.

“Yeah,” Barley agreed. “Sobriety’s like, the next big thing on the scene. Trashbat’s holding a sober rave later this month—you should come—”

“Now, Nathan,” Robin said, still in that softer sing-song voice, “Dan’s a little stunned. Let’s give him some space, yeah?” She guided Nathan back to his seat, and Dan picked up the cake box and opened it to expect the damage. 

The cake was completely smashed. There was no salvaging it. Dan thought he might scream.

“Oh, is that chocolate and strawberry?” Robin said. “That’s Richard’s favorite. He’ll appreciate that for sure!”

“What do you mean, he’ll appreciate that?” Dan growled. “It’s all... smashed.”

Robin shrugged. “It’s a little ugly, but I’m sure it’ll taste just fine.”

“Can’t judge a cake by its frosting,” Barley quipped.

Dan still wanted to punch the man, but maybe not quite so hard this time. 

After the meeting, the entire group stood around the room, shoving cake into their mouths, including Barley. 

“Congrats on the 14-day coin!” Diane said, shoving a forkful of cake into her mouth. “The first month is the hardest, it gets easier after that.”

Dan took a bite and made a noncommittal sound around his mouthful of cake that Diane seemed to interpret as  _ thanks _ . 

“How’d you know chocolate and strawberry was my favorite?” Richard asked.

“Robin told me,” Dan said. “Umm... happy sober birthday? Sorry I dropped your cake.” He took another bite—it might have been ugly, but it still tasted pretty good. He’d have to try some of the other baked goods the next time they went to the cafe...

“No matter,” Richard said. “Still tastes good. You think I could have another slice?”

“It’s your cake, mate,” Dan said, feeling a little better. “Have as much as you want.”

“Oh shit, there’s more cake?” Barley asked. 

Dan rolled his eyes—of course someone as juvenile as Barley couldn’t control himself around sugar. He was about to snap something to that effect when Richard served Barley a huge slab of cake.

“Thanks, man,” Barley said, immediately shoving a massive forkful of cake into his mouth. “This shit is really good,” he said around a mouthful of half-chewed confectionery.

Dan put his fork down. Suddenly, his own plate looked a lot less appetizing. He popped a cigarette between his lips. 

“Hold up, Dan—I’ll join you,” Robin said, tossing her own plate into the trash and following Dan out into the alley.

Dan sparked his cigarette and leaned against the wall, exhaling a plume of smoke. Robin held her hand out for the lighter. “What’s the deal with you and Nathan?” she said, sparking her cigarette and taking a deep drag.

“Used to work for him,” Dan said. “You ever hear of the website Trashbat?”

“Trashbat dot cock,” Robin quipped. 

“Yeah, that’s the one—Nathan owns it,” Dan said. “Wait, how the fuck do you know about that?”

“I like the hobo races,” Robin said.

Dan groaned. His fucking  _ sponsor _ was an idiot. Idiots—they were  _ everywhere. _

“What’s wrong with hobo racing?” Robin asked. 

“It’s stupid and exploitative,” Dan huffed, working himself into a huff. “Rich bastards like Nathan find some hopeless drunks on the street, sic angry dogs on them and then bet their trust fund on which one can run the fastest. There’s no culture in it... no meaning in it—”

“I dunno, Dan,” Robin interrupted. “Sounds to me like you’re way too concerned with whether something’s cool or not.”

“It’s not about cool or uncool,” Dan sputtered. “It’s about the  _ idiots _ dumbing everything down—”

Robin stomped out her cigarette butt. “Who cares if the idiots like it? Way I see it, the only thing worth caring about is if  _ you _ like it.” Dan opened his mouth to protest, but Robin cut him off. “Actually, that’s your next task... to do something just because it makes you happy, without thinking about whether it’s stupid or not.”

Dan’s first instinct was to tell her how stupid that sounded. But he thought better of it, and crossed his arms instead. “Like what?” he huffed around the cigarette in his mouth. 

“The fuck am I supposed to know about what you like?” Robin said. “That’s for you to figure out.”

Dan supposed she had a point.

The next day was shit from the moment Dan woke up. He’d overslept, and when he finally managed to drag himself out of bed, his hip reminded him of the fall he’d taken the day before. He’d had to double up on his painkillers, which left him feeling cranky and heavy-limbed.

He was supposed to meet Claire for their weekly lunch in an hour, and Dan was tempted to cancel, but knew it would be hopeless—Claire would text and call him relentlessly until he agreed to reschedule. He might as well get it over with.

Dan dragged himself to their usual cafe. He almost ordered his usual cup of English Breakfast, black without sugar, but at the last minute, decided to try one of the complicated lattes, something called a “dirty chai”. It arrived smothered in whipped cream and drizzled with syrup.

“What the hell is that?” Claire said, sliding into the seat across from him.

Dan shrugged and took a sip, then made a face. “Disgusting.”

“Why’d you order it then?” Claire said, lighting a cigarette. She offered the pack to Dan, who took two. 

He popped one between his lips and lit it, desperate to chase the overly-sweet taste of the drink from his mouth. “Dunno. My sponsor told me to do something fun, just for the hell of it. I tried, drinking pretentious coffee drinks turns out not to be fun.” He pushed the offending drink to the edge of the table and hailed the server to take it away.

“Wait, your  _ sponsor?” _ Claire’s mouth hung open, either in surprise or disbelief, perhaps both. 

“Yeah,” Dan said. “I’ve been, uh, going to meetings.”

“Fuck, Dan, how long has this been going on?”

“I guess since you told me to see a therapist? Sometime around there, at least.” 

Claire snarled around her cigarette. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, eyeing Dan suspiciously. “You’re sure you’re the same Dan Ashcroft, not like, some pod person wearing my brother’s skin?”

“Is it so difficult to believe that I actually have an honest desire to improve my life by quitting drinking, and decided to get some help to do it?” Dan retorted.

Claire raised an eyebrow and gave him a  _ look _ . “Pardon me. It’s not like I’ve watched you run an endless race to the bottom of the bottle for the last twenty years or anything.”

Touche, Dan thought. Loath as he was to admit it, Claire had a point. He  _ had  _ spent more than half his life fucked up. Every time that someone dared to suggest that he might have a problem, he’d ignored them and drunk more. Alcohol was a great shortcut for dealing with your problems—you could just drink until you stopped caring or passed out, whichever came first. The thing was, once the drunk wore off and the hangover started, your problems were still there, right where you’d left them. If you were really unlucky, you might have added a few more while you were under the influence. “Maybe I just got tired of it. S’not like the bottom of one bottle is any different from another. They’ll both fuck you up; it’s a matter of how quickly.”

Claire bit down on the filter of her cigarette, appearing to consider what he’d said. “Damn, Dan, that’s practically poetry.” She blew out a stream of smoke, right into Dan’s face. He grumbled and waved the smoke away, but Claire ignored him. “You should write that down.  _ Are _ you writing?”

Of course, he wasn’t—both he and Claire knew the answer to that question. Instead of dignifying it with a response, Dan changed the subject. “I read your proposal last night.”

Claire froze. The ash on her cigarette was disarmingly long, and spilled onto her shirt. She ignored it. “My... proposal?”

“You know, the one about the radical antifascists? Something something, anticapitalism and radical acceptance will save the world?”

“Yeah, I know, you prick,” Claire muttered. “I wrote the damn thing, after all.”

“It’s pretty good,” Dan said, stubbing out his fag end and filching another from Claire’s pack. “‘Course, you use like 3 adjectives when one would suffice, and you keep repeating yourself, but... it’s good.”

“Good,” Claire repeated, as though she didn’t understand quite what the word meant. “You think my proposal’s.... good.”

“Could be better,” Dan said. “That is, if you let me edit it for you—”

“You, edit my proposal, for me,” Claire repeated, utterly dumbfounded. Dan was secretly pleased that he’d managed to cause Claire to short-circuit. She didn’t often have emotions that weren’t anger or sarcasm. It was good for her to expand her emotional palate, as it were. Made her more well-rounded or something. If not that, well, at least it might improve her blood pressure. That was the problem with caring about things—you could make yourself sick if you weren’t careful.

“I mean, I don’t have to, if you don’t want me to—”

“Shove off, Dan, of course I want you to!” Claire exclaimed. “Just... fuck, I don’t know, it’s been, what? Fifteen years I’ve been writing specs and proposals, and you’ve never, not once, bothered to take a look at them, much less edit them for me. Pardon me if I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this.” She rested her head in her hand, squinting as she attempted to make sense of Dan’s sudden change of heart.

Dan almost felt bad for her. “Maybe it’s the meetings,” he said.

Claire made a hacking sound in her throat. “There, there,” Dan said, thumping her on her back to help her get her breath back. He wasn’t sure it was helping, but it felt pretty good to slap Claire and get away with it. She was his sister, and he loved her, but fuck if she wasn’t annoying.

After the meeting, Dan settled onto the couch with his laptop and a cup of coffee. After he’d quit drinking the first time, he’d been adamant that he was going to stick to tea; coffee reminded him too much of waking up an hour late for work with a blinder of a hangover and the accompanying desperate need for something to wake him up and wash the taste of yesterday’s beer from his mouth. 

He was certainly regaining a taste for the stuff, probably because of all the meetings. Everyone in AA seemed to drink coffee the way alcoholics downed booze. Bunch of sober alcoholics, Dan thought fondly, it was enough to drive you to drink... coffee. He chuckled to himself over the private joke.

He took a sip—the coffee was bitter, black, and sweet, and made him think of Jones—then shook his head and forced himself to concentrate on Claire’s proposal. The deadline was in a week, though Dan had promised to meet up with her in four days to discuss the changes he’d made and any other suggestions he had, and Dan had a lot of work to do if he was going to whip this thing into shape before then.

He still wasn’t sure what had possessed him to volunteer to help Claire. He’d admitted as much to Robin, as they’d hung around outside the cafe while Barley and their fellow alcoholics downed irresponsible quantities of coffee; Robin had simply assured him it was a sign that the Program was working.

“Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of steps, but they all basically boil down to one thing: sobriety’s a gift that’s been given to us, yeah? And it’s our responsibility to give back, to show our gratitude for having been given the gift in the first place. ‘S why I sponsored you, but there’s other ways of paying it forward,” Robin explained.

“I don’t get it,” Dan said, pitching his butt into the street and immediately lighting another. “Doesn’t feel like a gift.” He certainly didn’t feel  _ gracious _ for his sobriety; it came with all the baggage of the years he’d spent drunk, the lost money, lost opportunities, and lost relationships that came along with it.

“Maybe not yet,” Robin said. “But you will.” She exhaled a stream of smoke. “You make any progress with the task I gave you?”

“Doing something fun, just for the fuck of it?” Dan shook his head. “I tried one of those fancy coffee drinks, a ‘dirty Chai’ or something... tasted so bad I had to send it back.”

“Guess it wasn’t your cup of tea,” Robin quipped. 

Dan glared.

“Anyway, maybe fancy coffee drinks aren’t  _ your _ idea of fun,” Robin said. “You’ll figure out what is eventually.”

Dan’s first instinct had been to deny it, but the way Robin had said it—so self-assuredly, as though it were too obvious to deny—made him reconsider. He was still trying to wrap his head around that, three hours later. Truth was, most of the things he’d considered “fun” either were directly related to drinking, or else only fun when you were drunk.

He tried to force his attention back to Claire’s proposal, but he was far too restless. He reached for his phone. Maybe he’d call Jones? It wasn’t like he was procrastinating—he was just completing one of Robin’s tasks, the one to call someone every day and ask how they were doing. 

Dan reached for his mobile. Jones picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, Danny, what’s up!” Jones trilled. 

He sounded a little off, but Dan ignored it. “Nothing,” Dan said. “Just—”

“Oi, how’d you like that?” Jones interrupted. “That weren’t me, it were the parrot!”

“Wait, you trained your parrot to play a trick on me?”

“Not my parrot, my da’s parrot, but yeah,” Jones said.

“He’ll miss you when you come back home,” Dan said, without really thinking about it. 

Jones’s breath crackled over the line. “Dan—”

“Look, I know, you said you needed time,” Dan said, tightening his grip on his mobile as if he were trying to hold Jones close, “and you can have all the time you need. I just—” he swallowed, then fondled the fourteen-day coin in his pocket, “I haven’t been drinking, you know.”

Jones made a noncommittal sound. Dan couldn’t blame him—he wouldn’t have believed himself either. 

“I mean it,” Dan said, clutching the coin in his fist. “I’ve been going to meetings this time. Got my first coin yesterday—14 days.”

Dan could hear Jones doing the math in his head. “So your last drink was—”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “The night before you left.” He held the fourteen-day coin in the palm of his hand, its weight comforting. “Jones, I—I know fucked up. I know  _ I’m _ a fuckup—that I’m fucked up. I’m trying to be... less fucked up. Because I don’t want to keep fucking up what we have.” 

A parrot shrieked in the background. Jones didn’t say anything.

“I used to think I couldn’t live without alcohol,” Dan said, rushing to fill the silence. “Turns out that I can. But I’m bad at living without you.”

“Dan—” Jones breathed.

“You don’t have to give me an answer yet. Or... ever,” Dan said. “I know I don’t deserve it. I—I took too much, and gave too little. I know that—that I wasn’t easy to love, and I’m sorry.” He rubbed the 14-day coin between his fingers like a good-luck charm. “I can’t take it back, but I’m—I’m getting better, Jonesy.”

“You been sick a long time,” Jones said softly.

“But you—loving you was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Maybe too easy,” Dan admitted. “But I’m willing to work at it, if you are. If you give me the chance.”

The silence crackled between them. It hurt Dan’s ears, and he screwed his eyes shut, focusing on the weight of the coin in his hand to ground himself. 

Finally, Jones broke the silence. “I didn’t mean to stay away so long,” he said, his voice soft and wistful. “Brighton’s all right, but I miss London, and I miss—you.”

“Don’t stay away too much longer,” Dan pleaded.

Jones cleared his throat. “I’ll try not to.” His voice was thick with emotion,

“I guess... I guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then,” Dan said.

“Yeah,” Jones agreed.

They spent a long time on the phone, just breathing, before Dan could force himself to hang up. He tossed his phone at the wall, watching it bounce off the print of Jones on the wall. It ricocheted off the painted facsimile of Jones’s prodigious nose, then clattered to the floor.

It wasn’t until he reached to pick it up that he realized he’d forgotten to ask Jones how he was doing. Turned out, Dan was still selfish. If he’d been trying to convince Jones to come back, he was doing a piss-poor job of it.

He typed out a text.  _ I forgot to ask how you were doing. I hope you’re happy down there.  _

Dan settled back onto the couch and pulled his laptop into his lap, determined to finish going over Claire’s draft before he got distracted again. A few minutes later, just as he’d been figuring out how to condense three paragraphs of antifascist principles into a single paragraph, his phone pinged.

_ i’d be happier if you were here with me xoxoxox _

Dan cradled the phone in his palm and pretended he was holding Jones’s hand in his. It wasn’t as good as the real thing, but it was good enough.

Two days later, Dan came back from his daily meeting to find Jones in the living room, standing at his decks with his headphones over his ears, eyes closed as he listened to a sound only he could hear.

Dan froze, taking in the sight of him. Jones was sunburnt; the neon pink tank he was wearing clashed horribly with his pink skin. Of course someone as pale as Jones would burn after spending two weeks at the seaside, but Dan was still surprised to learn that Jones, nocturnal as he was, had been in the sun long enough to burn so badly.

Jones opened his eyes and looked up from his decks, directly at Dan. “Wotcher, Dan.”

Dan had a million things he wanted to say to Jones. They all crowded in his throat, and he coughed, choking on them all. “Jones,” he managed to wheeze out, “you’re home.”

Jones shrugged off his headphones. “Yeah, took an early train back to London.”

“How’s your mum and dad?” Dan asked, feeling like he ought to ask, to let Jones know he hadn’t forgotten about his parents. That he’d been listening, even if he hadn’t always been so good at listening to Jones before.

“They’re fine,” Jones said, unhooking his headphones from his deck and sitting down on the couch. “Told me not to wait two years to visit next time.” He patted the cracked leather cushion in a familiar invitation, and Dan slid onto the couch next to him, careful to leave a respectable amount of space between them even though every instinct he had screamed at him to launch himself in Jones’s lap and curl around him and never let him leave again. “Maybe next time, you could come with me. I think they’d like that.”

It took Dan far too long to make sense of what Jones was saying. “You’re—inviting  _ me, _ to go to your parent’s house with you?”

Jones smiled. “Yeah, if you... if you want to.” He smiled softly, fondly. Dan’s heart skipped—he’d missed Jones’s crooked smile, the snaggly incisor that always caught on his lip when they kissed. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Dan said, bursting with earnesty. He sounded embarrassing even to himself, but he didn’t care. “They’re important to you... I’d like to meet them.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs—he wanted to touch Jones, to grab him, smell him, know that he was close and he was  _ real _ , but he kept his hands to himself, unsure how much Jones would permit—Dan knew if the situation were reversed, he would not welcome a touch. “And the parrot. We’ve talked so much I feel like we’ve already met.”

Jones laughed. “Ah, he’s a bastard, but a good one,” he agreed.

They stared at each other for a moment. Something hung in the air, some unseen, unspoken tension, and try as Dan might, he couldn’t figure out what it was or what it meant or how to stop it. Jones’s smile faded, and Dan blurted out, “I drank all your coffee.”

Whatever would have diffused the tension, that wasn’t it. Jones looked more confused than anything. “You don’t even  _ like _ coffee,” he said, dumbfounded.

“I know, but it reminded me of you... and also I started drinking coffee at the meetings... You like the fancy stuff right?... I would have got you some more, but I didn’t know you were coming home...” The words poured out of him, all of them nonsense; Dan knew he was merely putting off the inevitable. 

Jones shook his head, his hair rippling across his face, hiding his expression from Dan as the absurd confession poured out of him, and Dan felt a bit sheepish—after all these years, after all the bullshit he’d put Jones through, why the hell was he apologizing about the coffee?

“Yeah, I prolly should’ve texted you or something,” Jones said, running a hand through his hair. It was something he only did when he was nervous—he spent far too much time getting it to lie  _ just so _ , the perfect balance between  _ I woke up like this _ and  _ I tried really hard at this _ . “Sorry. Thought I might—lose my nerve.”

Knowing he was the one who’d gotten them into this mess gave Dan a terrible, nauseated feeling in his stomach. “Well, I’m glad you’re home,” Dan said with feigned casualness. 

“Me too,” said Jones softly, hands still mussing his own hair. He caught himself and pulled his hand out of his hair to lean over and rest his hand at the base of Dan’s neck, rubbing a tangled lock of Dan’s too-long hair between his fingertips.

Dan closed his eyes. The rush of emotion was almost too much to handle. He reached for Jones, wrapping him into a bear hug and burrowing his nose into the space behind Jones’s ear. Jones’s wild hair tickled his face; his scent tickled Dan’s nostrils. He smelled like coconut sunscreen, probably from all the time he’d spent on the beach lately, but also salt and spraypaint and old electronics, immediately familiar. 

Jones twisted the lock of Dan’s hair he’d been rubbing between his fingers around his fingertip and tugged. Dan had to stifle a whimper in the skin of Jones’s neck; Jones tugged harder, and Dan forced himself to stop burrowing into Jones’s hair to look him in the face.

Jones’s mouth was soft, slightly open. Dan licked his lips, sure that Jones was about to fit their mouths together. But instead, Jones let out a sigh and looked away.

“I missed you, Dan,” Jones said. “I just... need some time. If we’re gonna start over, we can’t fuck it up,” he said, suddenly serious.

Dan swallowed, the hopeful pounding of his heart in his chest suddenly stuck on pause. “No,” he agreed.

“We fuck this up again, there ain’t no coming back,” Jones continued. 

Jones didn’t have to say it aloud—Dan understood. He’d quit drinking and started again more times than he could count. He shifted on the couch, resting his elbows on his knees and propping his chin in his palms; Jones wrapped his arms around himself, as though trying to give himself a hug. Dan wished more than anything that he could gather Jones in his arms and offer the comfort that Jones so obviously needed, but he kept his hands to himself. “I can’t promise I’m never going to drink again. But I promise to try.”

“This ain’t the first time you made that promise,” Jones said, his voice slow and serious. The unspoken  _ it prolly ain’t gonna be the last time neither _ hung in the air between them, so loud that Jones didn’t need to say it for Dan to hear.

“I know,” Dan said softly. 

“We was friends, before,” Jones said. “Maybe we could start there.” He stuck his hand out; when Dan grasped it, Jones shook their hands vigorously, in an exaggerated version of a handshake. “Daniel Jones, but you can call me Jones. All my friends do.”

“My name is Dan Ashcroft,” Dan said, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

Jones released his hand. “You really been goin’ to those meetings.”

“Every day.”

Jones whistled. He had the same high-pitched whistle as Robin, and Dan was reminded again just how similar Jones and his sponsor were. “What’s it like?”

Dan sat back on the couch. “The thing about AA is that it’s just like any other group of people—full of idiots.” He launched into descriptions of his fellow alcoholics, Jones nodding and occasionally laughing whenever Dan related a particularly scathing detail, looking completely enthralled.

Dan smiled softly. Maybe, just maybe, they would get through this, the same way they’d gotten through the last ten years of Dan’s bad life decisions.

They talked until well past midnight, until Jones fell asleep on the couch. Dan covered him with one of their old, threadbare throws, and went to bed. It was still too big, too empty, without Jones beside him, but Dan felt better knowing Jones was just one room over instead of all the way in Brighton.

Dan slept late the next day, with barely enough time to make himself presentable before his meeting. When he’d showered and dressed and finally stumbled to the kitchen, stomach growling, Jones was already awake, though  _ awake _ was a strong word for the way Jones leaned boneless over a cup of tea, breathing in the steam. 

“It works better if you drink it, you know,” Dan said, putting the kettle on to boil as he rummaged through the cabinets. Luckily, there was still some bread left, and a heel of cheese, and he set about making himself a cheese toastie.

“Ugh,” Jones moaned. “I already drank like 3 of these. Shouldn’t it have started working by now?”

Dan felt another pang of regret for having finished the coffee—Jones drank even more coffee than his fellow sober alcoholics, and tea was probably like water for him. “I’m heading out for a couple of hours. I’ll pick up some beans on the way back.” 

Jones took a sip of his tea. “Thanks.”

“Sorry again for drinking all the coffee,” Dan said.

“It ain’t nothin’,” Jones said, but the way he clung desperately to his mug said otherwise. 

Dan made another cheese toastie, and shoved the plate under Jones’s nose. He took a bite, and smiled gratefully. “Shit, Dan, this ain’t half bad.”

“I’ve been cooking a bit. Nothing fancy,” Dan said. “Need to eat real food, now that I’m not getting all my calories from alcohol.”

Jones took another bite, chewing thoughtfully.

Dan shoved his empty plate into the sink, chugged his tea, and grabbed his keys off the hook by the door. “See you later?”

“Yeah, I’ll be around,” Jones said.

Dan tried not to read too much into his words.  _ We was friends before. Maybe we can start there, _ he reminded himself. 

Diane invited Dan to check out the new vegetarian cafe that had opened down the street from the church while they stood around and smoked after the meeting’s end, but he excused himself, saying he had to go grocery shopping. To his consternation, Barley volunteered to take his place, an offer that Diane accepted all too readily.  __

“She’s gonna regret that,” Dan mumbled under his breath as he watched Diane and Barley walk down the street, chatting excitedly about their favorite ways to eat tofu.

“What’s that, Dan?” Robin asked.

“Nothing,” Dan lied.

Robin cocked an eyebrow, but didn’t push. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan called over his shoulder.

He stopped by the market on his way back to the apartment, buying two pounds of the coffee beans Jones favored and picking up a few odds and ends, including another head of bok choy. He’d looked up a recipe after having panic-bought two heads, and he’d figured out how to make it edible. 

He put the coffee on to brew. The kitchen filled with the warm, rich scent of fresh coffee, and Dan took a deep breath. The smell reminded him of Jones. 

Speaking of Jones, the man was nowhere to be found. 

Dan sighed and poured himself a cup of coffee, trying not to be too disappointed that Jones hadn’t been home like he’d said he would be. Jones had more friends than Dan could count and never liked sitting still for very long, 

He headed to the bedroom, intending to take his afternoon pain pill. When he opened the door, Jones was sitting on the unmade bed, looking through Dan’s copy of the Big Book, the rest of Dan’s AA literature strewn haphazardly around him. “Jones?”

Jones shocked upright. “You’re back early.”

Dan wasn’t, but he didn’t bother to defend himself. “What’re you doing with my books?”

Jones had the decency to look sheepish. He piled the bulky, hardcover Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book on top of the others, facedown and still open to the page he’d been reading when Dan interrupted him. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Just came in here for a change of clothes, and saw ‘em on the nightstand—”

Dan sat down on the bed. “It’s all right, Jones.”

Jones’s brow furrowed as he traced the embossed cover of the Big Book with a fingertip. “Those meetings you talked about... you’re really serious about them, ain’t you?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “I thought I could quit by myself, you know? But it turned out I couldn’t  _ stay _ quit on my own.”

“Huh,” Jones said, thinking. “These steps, then? They’re working?”

“I think so,” Dan replied. “I haven’t worked through them all, but they... help.”

Jones hummed—he always did when he was thinking hard. “That coffee for me?”

“I already put milk in it,” Dan said, “but there’s more in the kitchen if you want it?”

“Thanks,” Jones said, standing up. He reached to collect the books, but Dan swatted him away. 

“Don’t worry about it, I got it,” Dan said.

Jones bit his lip, as though he was biting back a response. None came, and he left the room with one last lingering glance at Dan.

Dan gathered the books into a pile, but not before sneaking a peek at what Jones had been reading before Dan had interrupted him. The book was open to the chapter on Step 8:  _ Steps 8 and 9 are concerned with personal relations. First, we take a look backwards to try and discover where we have been at fault; next, we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have caused; and third, having cleansed away the debris of the past, we consider how to develop the best possible relations with every human being we know. _

Dan slammed the book shut. No wonder Jones had wanted to know if Dan was following the steps. “I’m trying, Jonesy,” he muttered, shoving the books back onto his nightstand. Then he got up to join Jones in the kitchen. 

Jones was chugging coffee and tossing records into his carrying case.

“Where’re you going?” Dan asked, curious.

“Got a gig tonight,” Jones said. “Don’t wait up.”

Dan didn’t. It didn’t take long before he’d fallen asleep on the couch. When he woke up to wash his face and stumble to bed, still half-asleep, he was vaguely aware that Jones hadn’t come home but too tired to think much about it.

Jones was still out when Dan woke up the next morning. He hadn’t been home, as evidenced by the fact that his deck was still missing.

Jealousy rose up in Dan’s throat. Jones liked to stay out late, sure, but he always came back to the flat, no matter how late or how much MDMA he’d gobbled during his night out. He’d barge in at 4 or 5 am, just as the sun was rising, only to collapse on the bed next to Dan, clinging to Dan as he rode out the last of his high.

If he wasn’t clinging to Dan, who was he clinging to?

It wasn’t  _ fair. _ Dan had been almost certain that they were on their way back to where they’d left off. But then Jones had stayed out all night, probably finding someone else, someone less fucked up, to fuck while Dan had slept, none the wiser.

Dan wanted to break something, but everything in the apartment aside from his laptop belonged to Jones. Instead, he settled for slamming the bathroom door so hard that the pictures on the walls shuddered.

He showered quickly, turning the hot water all the way up, standing under the hot stream until his skin was pink and tight, then aggressively cut the water off before the water had a chance to run cold. For all that Jones had done to turn the squat into a proper flat, he’d never managed to upgrade the hot water heater, which was tiny and ran cold after only a few minutes; Dan cursed Jones for his oversight. He knew it was irrational to be upset; after all, what had Dan done to fix the place up? He’d helped Jones with his various home-improvement projects by handing Jones the tools he asked for, but it wasn’t like Dan knew how to use them. Jones was good at fixing things, and all Dan was good for was breaking them.

Dan sighed. Anger was exhausting—he felt like he’d stayed up all night. He had promised to meet with Claire today to discuss the changes he’d made to her proposal; he had no time to go back to bed if he wanted to get it over with before his meeting.

_ Fuck _ . Dan swiped at the condensation on the mirror. His face stared back at him, bleary and red. He sneered and looked away, unable to look himself in the eye.

Maybe he’d feel better after a cigarette and his morning Percocet. He opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed the prescription, shaking out a handful into the palm of his hand. It would be so easy just to toss the lot in his mouth—

He popped one pill into his mouth and crunched it between his teeth. The bitter taste of the medicine exploded on his tongue, and he dumped the rest back into the vial before he could think twice about it. He’d managed to resist taking all his pills at once, but he was still on edge, and the only thing he could think to do to calm himself down was drink.

Once he’d dressed, he reached for his phone. There were no missed calls or texts from Jones. The craving for a drink grew stronger, and Dan’s tongue darted out to lick at his moustache, the old tic leftover from his drinking days. He knew if he called Jones now, he’d only say something he’d regret and then probably get drunk anyway, so he dialed Robin instead.

The phone rang and rang, and Dan paced across the tiny bedroom, back and forth, until Robin picked up. “Yo,” she said, sounding like she’d just woken up.

“Fuck, Robin,” Dan groaned. 

A lighter flicked on the other end. Robin breathed in, then out, her exhalation crackling over the line. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Jones didn’t come home last night,” Dan said, his voice alien and desperate.

“Fuck,” Robin agreed. Dan was about to launch into a diatribe, but Robin beat him to the punch. “Look, Dan, that sucks, but you don’t know what happened. Maybe he missed the last train and didn’t have money for a cab.”

“You don’t understand,” Dan said, “it doesn’t matter how late it is, Jones  _ always _ comes home.”

“He went to Brighton for two weeks. But he came home, Dan,” Robin said softly. “Look, you don’t know what’s going on. No sense freaking yourself about it until you know whether or not it’s worth freaking out about.”

Dan groaned. Robin was right—but what the hell was he supposed to do until then?

“You said yourself that Jones told you he needed some time,” Robin reminded him. “Maybe he just needed some space. It’s not easy finding space in a small flat.”

Dan nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him. “Yeah.”

“Look, I have some shit to do this morning, but if you need me I can rearrange some stuff, meet you in an hour or so...?”

“I’m meeting my sister for brunch in an hour,” Dan said.

“Good,” Robin said, breath crackling over the line as she took another drag of her cigarette. “You shouldn’t be alone if you’re feeling like this.”

“No,” Dan agreed.

“This is what you’re gonna do: take a minute and read today’s meditation in the Daily Reflections. Sit and think about it for five minutes, and call me back if you need to, if you’re still thinking about drinking, OK?”

“How did you know I was thinking about it?” Dan asked.

“I’m an alcoholic, Dan. I know how your mind works.” She sighed. “I’d stay on the line while you read it, but you woke me up and I have to piss like hell—”

“OK, OK, that’s enough. I already listen to all your girl problems, I don’t need to hear about your vagina—”

“Fuck, you really are gay aren’t you?” Robin said. “Women don’t piss out of our vaginas. It’s called the urethra, and it’s a completely separate opening—”

“I’m hanging up now,” Dan warned. He moved the phone away from his ear, but Robin was cackling so loudly he could still hear it. He hung up, and reached for the book of daily reflections on his night table, flicking it open to today’s date.  _ Under very trying conditions, I have had to forgive others, and also myself. _

It was short, yet poignant, and uncannily relevant to his situation. He held the words in his head, repeating them over and over until his heart stopped racing and he could think clearly again. He wasn’t sure he’d quite managed to forgive himself, but he knew that he would forgive Jones, no matter where he’d spent last night. 

Claire was waiting for him at their usual table. She was staring at her laptop so intently that Dan had to pinch her upper arm, right at the fattest part, before she acknowledged him. 

“Ouch!” Claire swatted at him and glared. “The hell are you doing?”

“Is that any way to greet the brother who so kindly agreed to help you rework your proposal?” Dan said, sprawling insouciantly in his chair.

Claire rolled her eyes. “Thank you, brother dear,” she said sarcastically. 

Dan lit a smoke. “You got my suggestions?”

“Yeah, I have a question... that bit halfway down the second page?” Claire scrolled down to the part in question and shoved the laptop in front of Dan’s face. “I’m not sure that your version really captures what I was going for...? It’s less about Antifa’s optimism, and more about the practical and workable solutions for a post-capitalist society—”

Dan squinted at the passage, reworking it in his head. “Gimme a minute,” he said, tapping his fingers against the tabletop as he thought. Just as he was about to start typing, he caught a familiar face walking down the sidewalk. 

Claire was too busy talking to notice. “Even if I don’t win,” she said, “it means a lot to me, you helping out like this--”

“Fuck, hide me,” Dan said, sliding down in his seat.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Claire snapped.

But it was too late. Barley had seen him. The man made a beeline for the table. “Ashcroft and Ashcroft!” he brayed, looking chuffed. “Claire, monkey muff, it’s been a minute.”

Claire rolled her eyes at the nickname, but she offered her hand for Barley to shake. Barley, the twit that he was, kissed it instead. “Looking good, Claire. Whatever you’ve been doing, it’s working for you.”

“Um, thanks?” Claire said.

“Dan, Dan my man,” Nathan clapped Dan on the back. “Going to the meeting today?”

“I go to the meetings  _ every _ day, you twat,” Dan barked. 

Nathan took the insult in stride, smiling good naturedly. “Cool cool,” he said. “I see you’re giving Claire the old sixth step treatment, yeah? Making amends and all?”

“If you must know,” Claire said, coming to Dan’s rescue and running interference between him and Barley, “Dan’s helping me with my latest proposal.”

Nathan made as if to sit down in one of the empty chairs at their table, but Dan kicked the chair away before he could. He almost went down, but grabbed at Dan to catch himself, and Dan ended up with a lapful of Barley, which was even worse than sitting next to the man.

Claire gave him a weird look as Dan pushed Barley back to his feet.

“Another movie? Righteous,” Barley said, turning his attention to Claire. “What’re you working on now?”

“A documentary about radical antifascists,” Claire said, starting up her usual spiel. “It’s not just about resisting fascism, but a whole philosophy critiquing late-stage capitalism...”

Dan had heard it a dozen times before, and had spent hours reading about it. He zoned out, typing some edits into the word processor just so he didn’t have to listen to it again. 

“Well, I don’t wanna get in the way of your quality brother-sister time,” Nathan said, grinning at Claire. She grinned back.

“OK, great, now go,” Dan muttered.

“One more thing,” Nathan said, reaching into his messenger bag to hand Claire a flyer. “Trashbat’s hosting a sober rave. Sober partying is the next big trend, and it’ll be the first sober rave in Shoreditch... You should come.”

Claire accepted the flyer. “Thanks, Nathan.”

Nathan beamed before jumping onto his tiny bike and riding away. He hopped off the curb and executed some fancy bike-handling move, spinning the handlebars while he was in midair, and whooping jubilantly as he stuck the landing.

Claire watched him ride off, a small smile on her face.

“Oh, fuck  _ no _ ,” Dan groaned, “not  _ again _ .”

“Jesus, Dan, what’s your problem?” Claire sniped. 

“He’s stalking me again,” Dan whined. “Ran into him outside AA one day, and he’s been following me to meetings ever since.”

Claire turned the sober rave flyer over in her hands. “Seems like he’s taking the whole sobriety thing pretty seriously.”

“It’s just another trend to him,” Dan assured her. “Soon as the next thing comes along, he’ll forget all about it.”

“You’re a prick, Dan,” Claire snapped. “Like you’re any better than him, just ‘cos it took you falling out a window and losing Jones to get your shit together?” She pocketed the flyer. “Good for Nathan.”

It was Dan’s turn to raise an eyebrow at her. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about going.”

“So what if I am?” Claire snapped. “I don’t understand why you hate him so much.”

“He’s an  _ idiot,” _ Dan fired back.

Claire reached for her cigarettes. “Nathan may be an idiot, but he’s not an arsehole, which is more than I can say about you.”

“Here I am, helping you rewrite your proposal...”

Claire shoved the packet of cigarettes at him. “And I’m eternally grateful. Remind me when I have my first kid; you can keep it.”

Dan shoved one of her cigarettes between his lips and lit up. “Ew, gross. Why do I have to keep it? Just get an abortion like a normal person.”

Claire glared, but Dan knew she meant it affectionately. He blew a stream of smoke in her face, also affectionately, and typed another edit into Claire’s proposal while she coughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: Suicidal ideation. It's short, lasting only a paragraph or two, but seemed worth mentioning.


	5. v.

Dan felt on edge all throughout the meeting. He hadn’t had time between brunch and the meeting to stop by the flat to check on Jones, and his cell had been silent, save for a couple of texts from Robin, checking in to make sure he hadn’t decided to drown his sorrows (or himself) in a bottle of whiskey or a vat of ale. 

Robin seemed aware of his fragile mental state, and did her best to run interference between Dan and Nathan, who seemed to think that their earlier encounter had nudged them over the line from reluctant friends-in-sobriety to actual _friends._ Still, the anxious feeling in Dan’s stomach had roiled all afternoon long, and even the hearty lunch Claire had bought him as thanks for helping her with her proposal hadn’t settled the nauseous feeling in his stomach, which was bad enough that Dan didn’t dare drink the free coffee. 

He sat at the back of the room, barely participating at all, only half-heartedly joining in with the closing ceremony. As the rest of the members headed outside for a much-needed smoke break, Dan sat in his chair, cold coffee in his hand. An unappetizing skin had formed over the top of it as it cooled, and Dan stirred it idly, watching the congealed milk form into a lump.

Robin sat in the chair next to him with a huff. “You all right, Dan?”

Dan gave her a look that said he was most definitely _not_ all right.

“Should’ve known better than to ask,” Robin grumbled. “But you made it through the day without drinking, yeah?”

Dan nodded.

“It feels shitty now, I know,” she said softly, “but that feeling won’t last forever.” She punched him softly and affectionately on his shoulder. 

“What if it does?” Dan asked petulantly. If Jones had found someone else, he didn’t know what he would do, where he would go. He didn’t even have a car to sleep in anymore—if Jones were to kick him out, he’d end up either on the street or sleeping on the couch in Claire’s overcrowded flat, which seemed even worse, considering all her flatmates were trust-fund hipsters pretending to be poor because it was cool or something. Too many _idiots_ in the same room to stand.

“Then you do what you’ve been doing—keep going to the meetings, doing the daily meditations, whatever you can to keep your mind off drinking.”

Dan meant to snarl, but it sounded more like a sob. He bit down on his lip and blinked—he would _not_ cry. 

“You don’t have to rush to fix everything right now,” Robin said. “It took a long time to fuck things up, it’ll take a while to _un_ fuck it, too.”

Dan reached into his pocket, feeling the edges of his 14-day coin. He’d started carrying it everywhere, as a reminder of how far he’d come, and how much he stood to lose. 

“Anyway, Richard’s invited the whole crew bowling tomorrow night. Come out with us—my treat.” Robin smiled and reached into her chest pocket to pull out her cigarettes. She offered one to Dan, who accepted. “Whatever happens, might be good to give Jones a little space, and who knows—you might actually enjoy it.”

Dan huffed. Bowling sounded about as appetizing as going on a date with Nathan Barley. “Will Barley be there?”

Robin stood up, offering Dan a hand and hoisting him out of his chair. “‘Course,” she said. “He’s one of us now, ain’t he?”

Dan made a choking sound in his throat. Typical Robin, saying shit he didn’t want to hear, even if it was right. “You’re paying,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I already said I would. Now stop moping and go smoke. You’ll feel better.”

Dan followed her out the door, lighter already in his hand. Damn the woman, but she was right about that.

Jones was back at the flat when Dan got home, sitting on the floor in the living room, coffee cup at his side as he rifled through a large, tattered cardboard box.

Dan helped himself to the coffee, and took a cautious sip. It was strong, but not overly bitter—better than any cup Dan had brewed himself.

“What’ve you got there?” Dan asked, settling onto the couch.

Jones startled, shoving a handful of paper into the box. “Shit Dan, what’re you creeping around like that for?”

“I’m not creeping,” Dan said. “You’re just going deaf. All that loud music can’t be good for your hearing.” 

“ _You’re_ one to talk,” Jones grumbled. “Can hear you snoring all the way from the couch. Dunno how you sleep with so much racket.”

“Same way you can sleep through your own mixes,” Dan said, shuffling over to crouch next to him. “It’s _my_ racket.”

“I make music, not a racket,” Jones protested good-naturedly. He stood up, and one of the photographs which hadn’t made it back into the box tumbled from his lap to the floor. Dan peeked into the box, which was overflowing with junk—action figures with melted faces, yellowing crayon drawings, and a pile of faded photographs, the collected ephemera of a distant childhood. 

Dan picked it up before Jones could snatch it away. It depicted a young Jones, a little older than the pictures he’d sent via text—he looked like a young teenager, maybe thirteen or fourteen, still too thin and gangly, though he appeared to have discovered the wonders of Manic Panic hair dye and pound-shop eyeliner: his hair was streaked with chunky bright red highlights and eyes ringed in a thick layer of liner, already smeared. A massive tabby cat was curled on his lap, belly-up, gazing up at Jones with an adoring expression. “That Ziggy Stardust?”

Jones rested his chin on Dan’s knee to glance at the picture. “Yup. Last one I have of her before she died.” His voice wavered a bit, and Dan hesitated before placing a hand on his shoulder. He could feel the bones of Jones’s shoulder blade against the palm of his hand—Jones had, improbably, lost weight during his trip home. A fragment of one of his phone conversations surfaced from Dan’s memory, summoned by the feel of Jones’s bones under his skin: _And they loved those animals—they doted on them, threw birthday parties for the dogs, but they never remembered to throw a birthday for me._ Dan wondered if Jones’s parents had remembered to feed him during his visit, or if they’d left him to fend for himself. It seemed rude to ask, so instead he said, “She looks like she loved you.” 

Jones reached out a finger to stroke the cat’s back tenderly. “We loved each other,” he agreed. “Hadn’t thought about her in years, now I miss her all the time.” He shook his head sadly, as though clearing it of memories. “Funny how that happens.”

“I understand,” Dan said slowly, squeezing Jones’s shoulder, hoping Jones could feel his concern through the touch. “I felt the same way, when you were gone.”

Jones looked up from the photo to meet Dan’s eyes. He didn’t say anything, but Dan could see the question on his face.

“You were always there,” Dan said. “I never realized how much, until you weren’t.” 

Jones slithered from the floor onto the couch, nudging Dan aside. Dan shifted, reflexively curving his body around Jones. It was easy, too easy, not to talk, and Dan took a deep breath. He knew Jones would ignore it if he did, and they’d never have to have the uncomfortable conversation about where Jones had been last night. They could fall back into their familiar old pattern of not-talking, but the conversations they’d been having nearly every night made Dan determined to keep the conversation going once Jones was home. 

Dan’s hands were shaking, but he persisted. “You didn’t come home last night.”

“My ride got too fucked up to drive,” Jones explained, and the tension Dan had been carrying all day left his body all at once like a sigh. He slumped back against the couch, and Jones took advantage of Dan’s sudden softness to urge Dan to lie back and rest his head in Jones’s lap.

“Had to sleep in the van. But I’m back now, ain’t I?” He casually scritched the scruff under Dan’s chin; Dan leaned into the touch, rumbling with a pleased sigh. It had been so long since Jones had pet him—perhaps Jones had not been exaggerating when he’d compared Dan to a cat. He certainly felt like a pampered kitty, curled in Jones’s lap, nearly purring with the pleasure of being scratched. 

Dan stretched his arms over his head. Jones was back, but they were stuck in this weird liminal space—something less than the lovers they’d become, and more than the friends they’d been for over a decade. He wanted to ask if Jones was really back, or if he’d just come back to the flat because he had nowhere else to go. The place was more Jones’s than his—Jones had built in the House of the Jones from scratch, transforming it from an industrial shell to something that resembled a _home_. He knew Jones would never kick him out; he hadn’t even when Dan was at his rock bottom, drunk off his tits from the time he woke up until he passed out wherever he landed, nor when he’d come home from the hospital and needed help doing the most basic of things like taking a shower or a piss.

Jones had told Dan he needed _time_ , but hadn’t said _how much_ , and Dan didn’t know how to ask. Instead, he wrapped his hand over Jones’s, lacing their fingers together. Jones allowed the touch; he stroked his thumb against Dan’s hesitantly, almost shy. “Guess I don’t need to miss her with you around.”

Dan raised an eyebrow.

“Look at you. You’re just a big oversize kitty yourself,” Jones said, smiling and fond. 

“Just in case it escaped your notice, I’m a human man,” Dan said drily. “If you want a cat, get a fucking cat.”

It made Jones cock his head back and laugh. His whole body shook with it, jostling Dan’s head where it lay in his lap. It made Dan hopeful, knowing they could still tease each other like this. He hadn’t known how strong the peace they’d established between them via phone these last few weeks was; it still felt like such a fragile thing. If he could still make Jones laugh after everything Dan’d put them through, maybe he hadn’t broken Jones’s trust beyond repair after all.

“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Jones said, when he’d finally caught his breath. 

Dan flashed his teeth.

“‘Course, if we get one, you’ll both be fighting over the most comfortable places to sleep,” Jones said, teasing back.

Dan pinched him, and Jones pinched him back, grabbing the soft bit of skin under Dan’s neck. Dan was about to close his eyes and burrow into Jones’s lap, but Jones nudged him and stood slowly.

Grudgingly, Dan sat up. He rubbed his eyes drowsily—he’d been almost asleep, and was a little grumpy that Jones had moved. 

Jones shook his head, smiling softly, just enough that his crooked incisor peeked out. “You _are_ a cat, you lazy berk.” 

Dan glared back at him. 

“Ziggy’d give me that look whenever she fell asleep in my lap and I had to get up,” Jones said.

Dan hissed and bared his teeth. Jones just tugged on Dan’s ear and pulled the box up from the floor, placing it between them. They spent the rest of the afternoon going through Jones’s childhood memories, until Jones’s stomach started rumbling and Dan took the opportunity to show off some of his recently-acquired culinary skills by making bok choy and rice. He only burned it a little bit. Jones didn’t seem to notice.

Dan lifted one of the bowling balls and groaned. “Don’t they have anything lighter than this?”

He’d grudgingly allowed himself to be dragged along to the bowling alley for what Robin had called “sober happy hour”: “It’ll get you out of the house, give Jones some space,” she’d explained. “Plus, you’ll be around friends. _Sober_ ones. Keep your mind off drinking, at least.”

Of course, she’d neglected to mention that the aforementioned “sober friends” would include Nathan Barley, who, improbably, had become a regular attendee to the afternoon meeting, and, even more improbably, actually seemed to be taking this whole _sobriety_ thing seriously. Dan had been certain Barley would have moved on by now to some other trend, like shooting methamphetamine into his eyeballs, but he seemed to actually _like_ being sober. It turned out that sober Nathan was still stupid, but mildly less intolerable when he wasn’t stoned out of his mind and strung out on designer drugs. 

Of course, she’d also failed to mention that bowling balls were _heavy_ , and Dan, whose spine was held together by screws, protested every time he tried to pick one up.

“That’s a ten-pounder,” Richard said helpfully. “You can try one of the child’s balls—”

Nathan sniggered.

Dan shot him a scathing look, amending his earlier assessment of the sober-and-improved Barley to “marginally more tolerable”. Barley looked suitably cowed, but he redeemed himself by requesting a children’s ball so Dan didn’t have to embarrass himself. His utter shamelessness was at once the most endearing and most annoying personality trait he had, and Dan was annoyed to find that he was actually _thankful_ to the twit.

The smaller ball was light enough than Dan could roll it without hurting himself at least. Not that it mattered—most of his rolls ended up straight in the gutter.

For someone so mild-mannered, Richard was strangely competitive; when he mentioned having been in a bowling league before getting sober (“Bowling just became an excuse to drink, at least ‘til I started making sober friends”), Dan was not surprised. Barley, however, was inexplicably _good_ at bowling.

“Strike!” Barley shouted. It was his third in a row.

“How are you so good at this?” Richard mumbled, grudgingly entering the strike into the leaderboard. 

Nathan beamed. “Just a natural, I guess.”

Dan was pretty sure that Nathan’s trust-fund kid hubris was the only reason he was any good—the boy was probably so privileged and simpleminded that it simply hadn’t occurred to him that he might fail. Dan, on the other hand, had enough intelligence and neurotic self-awareness to know that he sucked, and therefore, he had a combined score of 30 eight frames in. 

He was about to say so when Robin glared at him. _Wench._ She was getting way too good at reading Dan for his comfort. Only Jones could read him as well as she had. Instead, he grumbled _congratulations_ and took a sip of his ginger ale, neat.

“Diane, it’s your turn,” Richard urged, anxious to take his next turn and knock Barley off the leaderboard. 

“One minute,” Diane said, typing something into her phone.

“Bowling waits for no man. Or woman,” Richard grumbled.

“Sorry, it’s important,” Diane said, completely nonplussed by Richard’s impatience. “It’s about the kittens.”

“Oooh, kittens?” Barley asked.

The proud mama flashed a photo of five tiny black kittens. “Yup! They’re weaning. I’ve found homes for two of them—three to go!”

Barley cooed over the cats, and Diane smiled. Improbably, she and Barley seemed to get along—she’d even referred to him as the son she’d never had. Dan had tried to warn her Barley was a shallow twat, but Diane had reached that point in every woman’s life where she stopped caring about men’s opinions. Menopause probably had something to do with it.

Dan wanted to say something scathing, but even he had to admit the kittens were pretty cute. One in particular caught his eye; it had bright blue eyes, almost as big and blue as Jones’s. He tapped on the phone screen, zooming in to take a closer look. “Is that guy taken?” 

“Noodle? No, not yet,” Diane said. “Why? You want him?”

Dan shrugged. “Not me. But my—” he stuttered. What was Jones? Boyfriend? Lover? Friend? Jones was home, but slept on the couch, and was careful to avoid touching Dan in any way that could be considered more intimate than friendship. Whatever they’d been, they were on pause. He cleared his throat. “Jones has been talking about adopting a cat.”

“Oi, you ‘n that DJ’re back together?” Barley asked, tactless as always.

Dan glared. What did Barley know about him and Jones? He was about to say something scathing, but Robin elbowed him. “Well, he’s back from Brighton.” His friends leaned in, obviously expecting more, but Dan was stubborn. “His parents have a bunch of animals, and he keeps talking about his childhood cat. Dunno, thought it might be nice to get him a buddy.”

“Aww, Dan, that’s so sweet!” Diane chirped. “I’ll warn you, Noodle’s a handful. A lot of energy.”

“I don’t think Jones would mind.” Jones was the most _energetic_ person Dan knew. 

“If you’re free after the meeting Thursday, you can come by and meet the kittens,” Diane said. “Bring Jones!”

“Text me your address,” Dan said. “I’ll ask him tonight.”

Diane squealed, obviously excited. “Aww, I know you’ll give him a good home. You’re a kind man, Dan.”

Dan didn’t want to disabuse her of that notion, so he just made an affirmative sound.

“You know what would be really kind?” Nathan asked, butting into yet another conversation that had nothing to do with him. “I need another DJ for Trashbat’s sober rave this weekend,” Nathan said. “You think Jones would wanna spin?” He seemed to anticipate Dan’s instinctive response of _no, you prick,_ because the next thing out of his mouth was, “It’s a paying gig.”

He handed Dan one of his fliers. He’d tried to give Dan a stack of them, which Dan had rebuffed every time, but he accepted this one. “I’ll let him know. No promises, though.”

Barley smiled. Somehow, it didn’t make Dan want to punch him in the teeth. Unfortunately, not wanting to punch Barley in the teeth made Dan want to punch _himself_ in the teeth. 

Life continued much as it had while Jones had been in Brighton: Dan went to his meetings, and plugged away at refining the final draft of Claire’s proposal—it was damn good, a hell of a lot better than it had been before he’d gotten his hands on it. Dan had never much enjoyed editing—he was a _writer_ , damn it, it was his job to spit out the words, let some lesser bastard do the hard work of cleaning it up—but there was something strangely satisfying about making someone else’s work _better_. 

Sometimes, like now, as he was going over Claire’s proposal with a fine-tooth comb, fixing errors in syntax and refining her choice of words, he’d hear fragments of an almost-story whispering in the back of his head. Dan closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to catch the snippets before they disappeared back into the endless, overwhelming babble of his inner monologue. 

He was never able to quiet his inner voice enough to hear it before it disappeared completely, and now was no different. He sighed and blinked, trying to bring the screen back into focus.

Jones was behind his decks with his headphones on, tapping his foot along to some erratic time signature while Dan wrote. It was like old times, when things were easy between them, before Dan had begun his long, slow descent to rock bottom in earnest. Listening to Jones’s music might have made Dan feel like he had a hole in his head, but Dan had always loved watching Jones _getting into_ the music—his whole body vibrated at the same frequency as the sounds he coaxed from his mixes.

The voice began whispering again, a bit louder this time. Funnily enough, closing his eyes seemed to make it quieter; it got louder the longer he looked at Jones.

Dan opened a new window in his word processor and typed a few lines before the voice receded again, then looked back to reread what he’d written.

_everything is too loud  
without you. the streets ripple  
with an ocean of noise: the sound of trains, garbage trucks,  
the old lady on the corner  
yelling the end is near, and i must  
repent. it gets under my skin  
and i can’t sleep, can’t think  
can’t even hear myself scream  
  
but when you touch me,  
the world goes silent.  
_

It wasn’t much, just a few sentences, if you could call them that—fragments really—and it was neither an article nor a story, but a _poem_ , a form of writing Dan had always thought was pretentious and stupid. Still, it wasn’t _awful,_ and it was more than he’d managed to write in over a year. 

“Whatcha writing?” Jones asked.

Dan jumped, quickly closing out of the doc. “Nothing,” he said, “just helping Claire with a proposal.”

“Ah, what’s Claire making a movie about this time? Child prostitutes? Amputees who make their own prosthetics out of reclaimed industrial waste?”

Dan chuckled. Jones had known Claire almost as long as he’d known Dan, well before she’d finally graduated from film school and moved in with them while she awaited funding to finish her thesis on the junkie choir. Some writers repeated themes and images in their work (Dan was certainly guilty of the same, if the dozens of pieces he’d written on idiots and idiocy were anything to go by); Dan supposed filmmakers must do the same. Granted, he found filmmakers to be incredibly insufferable, and he generally avoided them as much as possible, so he tended to judge them all by the one filmmaker he knew, who just so happened to be his sister.

“Nah, this time it’s the antifascists,” Dan said. “Radical tolerance, resisting the capitalist commodification of life, punching Nazis, that kind of thing.”

“Huh,” Jones said, looking thoughtful as he leaned down to look over the screen. Dan was thankful that he’d thought to close the window with his embarrassing fragment of a poem. “I think my buddy Neckface is pretty tight with the Shoreditch chapter, if Claire needs an in?”

Dan tilted his head up to look Jones in the eye. “Thanks. I’ll let her know.”

“No worries,” Jones chirped. 

Dan turned back to Claire’s proposal. He was almost done, which was a good thing, considering that the deadline was approaching quickly... Just as he was about to dive back into editing, however, he was startled by Jones’s hand in his hair.

Jones was just petting him, smoothing Dan’s unruly curls from root to tip. Dan looked at him quizzically, biting his lip before he blurted out something that would snap Jones back to reality and make him stop.

“Your hair’s getting long, innit?” Jones asked. 

“A little,” Dan admitted.

“Fancy a break?” Jones asked, fluffing Dan’s hair from the crown. His fingernails skritched gently against Dan’s scalp, making Dan melt into the couch cushions. “I can give it a trim. Won’t take more’n 20 minutes or so.”

Dan made an indistinct affirmative sound that was definitely _not_ a purr. Jones seemed to understand. 

“We should probably wash your hair first,” Jones mused. “Hair’s easier to cut when it’s wet, and it feels like it’s been a few days since the last time, anyway.”

To be honest, Dan couldn’t remember when he’d washed it last. The hot water in the squat was temperamental; you were lucky if the hot water in the shower lasted more than 5 minutes before going ice-cold, so he usually just soaped and rinsed his body as quickly as possible. He’d wet his hair, but he tried to avoid washing it unless he absolutely _had_ to. “Whatever you need to do,” Dan said. 

Jones lifted his hand from Dan’s head, much to Dan’s consternation, and set up one of their rickety folding chairs in front of the sink. “Wait here. I gotta get you some _product_.”

Grudgingly, Dan sat. The chair was small and uncomfortable, but he didn’t want to tell Jones that. He’d insist on finding a chair that didn’t bother Dan’s back, and Dan was impatient—he didn’t want to wait any longer to feel Jones’s hands on him.

The last week had been torture. Dan was glad Jones was home, but it was hell to have him _here_ but not to _have_ him. Jones’s smell, his _vibe_ , was everywhere, and Dan was wanking twice a day just to keep himself from crossing the line Jones had drawn between them. He ached more than anything to have Jones back, but he knew he could not push without breaking the fragile trust they’d built between them. 

Jones emerged from the bathroom, juggling a half-dozen bottles. He lined them up on the counter fussily, in precise order, while Dan wondered what the hell all the bottles were for.

“Take your shirt off for me, yeah?” Jones said. Dan hesitated, and Jones rushed to explain, “You can leave it, just didn’t want it getting all wet... Your hair’s past your shoulders now, you know?”

“No—I... I got it,” Dan said, standing up. He was wearing a threadbare flannel, and he undid the buttons at the cuffs, then started on his neck.

Jones was staring. His blue eyes burned right into the divot of skin at Dan’s collarbone. He undid the button with shaking hands, pulling at the placket until he managed to slide the button through the hole. One more. Two. Jones kept staring at him, gaze sliding down with every inch of skin Dan uncovered.

He undid the last button, and the shirt fluttered open. Jones’s gaze flitted from Dan’s belly button, the line of hair creeping up from the waistband of his jeans, up to his chest. His eyes skittered up to meet Dan’s, and Dan shrugged off his shirt, letting it pool dramatically to the floor.

Jones gasped. The sound made Dan flush; he felt the rush of warmth flood from his cheeks to his chest. “Sit,” Jones said, his voice low and hoarse. 

Dan sat.

“Good,” Jones growled, and though the room was warm and humid in the late-summer heat, Dan shivered; his nipples tightened. Jones’s fingers traced along the back of his neck, then gently tugged his head backward. “Lean back, just like that, yeah...”

Dan let out a shivery breath. Luckily, Jones turned the sink on, and the rush of water drowned it out. 

Jones let the tap run for a moment, testing the water with his hands. Finally, when he deemed it warm enough, he turned on the hose, gently wetting Dan’s hair. His fingers teased against Dan’s scalp, parting his hair into sections and wetting each. Finally, just when Dan thought he couldn’t take anymore, he turned off the water and grabbed one of the bottles, squirting a slug of shampoo into his palm.

He massaged the shampoo into a lather, his fingernails, always a bit too long, scratching pleasantly at Dan’s scalp. He hummed a tuneless song as he worked, and Dan closed his eyes, concentrating on Jones’s touch and the comforting sound of his song.

Eventually, Jones rinsed the shampoo, then shook a massive glob from the next bottle directly onto Dan’s scalp. “I wish you’d use conditioner more often,” Jones griped softly. “You have such nice curls, yeah? But they get all frizzy and lose their shape cos they’re so damn _dry_.” He worked the conditioner into Dan’s hair, combing it with his fingers, gently tugging the knots loose. 

“Which one’s the conditioner?” Dan mumbled. Jones dangled the bottle, some tacky pink and black thing, in front of his face, before rinsing Dan’s hair. “I’ll, um, try to remember,” Dan said. He already knew he’d probably mix it up with one of Jones’s dozen other bottles, and would probably end up dying his hair purple or something, but Jones had said he liked Dan’s curls, and Dan wanted Jones to like _him,_ so it seemed important to at least try. 

Finally, Jones turned the water off. He slung a towel over Dan’s shoulders, stroking the edges to make it lay flat. Jones’s palm accidentally brushed against the naked skin of Dan’s chest, dragging against the sensitive skin of Dan’s nipple, and Dan almost bit his lip hard enough to bleed as he desperately tried to keep from moaning.

Jones gave no indication that he noticed. He simply pushed Dan upright, then got out his comb and his shears. “How short, do you think?”

Dan shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it, didn’t really have a preference, as long as Jones kept touching him, Jones could give Dan a mohawk for all he cared.

“Just a trim, then,” Jones said. “We can always go shorter, but it’s not so easy to make it longer once you already cut it, yeah?”

“All right,” Dan said, and Jones got to work, combing small sections of Dan’s hair and snipping at it with the scissors. Every time his fingertips brushed against Dan’s skin, Dan fidgeted, and Jones made a warning sound deep in his throat.

Jones was so close that Dan could feel his breath against his skin.

He hummed as he worked. The toneless tune began to develop into a melody that Dan vaguely recognized. 

“What’s that?”

Jones paused. “Just a song I got stuck in my head.”

“Which one?”

He expected Jones just to tell him the name of the song, but Jones sang it instead. He didn’t have a classically handsome voice (nothing about Jones, from his strong features to his slim androgyny, could be called classically handsome), but he could carry a tune. “You say you’ll cut your bangs, I’m calling your bluff—”

“When you lie to me, it’s in the small stuff,” Dan finished, immediately recognizing the song. It was by a late-90s punk outfit that had had a brief run on the charts. “I know that one. ‘Cut Your Bangs’, Radiator Hospital.”

“Yeah, that’s the one!” Jones said, looking chuffed. He boxed Dan’s ear, playfully tugging on the lobe before getting back to work. He’d always been chuffed at Dan’s ability to name the songs in his mixes, no matter how obscure. “Last night I saw your face in the hallowed light, you were standing taller than a mountainside... Your long hair flowed down in blues and whites—” His voice broke on the high notes, and Dan chimed in, singing along with him.

“And I just stood there, bathed in the quiet note...”

Their voices harmonized on the chorus, Jones singing the low part, and Dan pushing his voice to sing in his seldom-used falsetto. “You say you’ll cut your bangs, I’m calling your bluff... When you lie to me, it’s in the small stuff....”

They paused, looking at each other. Dan wanted to say something, but the only thing he could think to say was, “We sound pretty good together.”

Jones ruffled Dan's damp hair. “Yeah, we do, don’t we?” He didn’t wait for Dan to answer, putting the scissors down, then reached for another one of his bottles, squirting out a handful of something white and puffy and scrunching it into Dan’s hair. It was sticky and smelled like hairspray.

“What the hell is that?” Dan asked, coughing.

“Mousse,” Jones said. “It’s for the curls.”

Dan reached up to touch his hair, and Jones swatted his hand away. “Don’t touch it til ‘it dries, unless you want me to get the blowdryer...”

Dan grimaced. “No blowdryer,” he said. 

“No touching,” Jones teased.

“Ugh, fine,” Dan agreed.

Jones handed him a mirror. “Take a look at yourself, yeah?”

Dan looked. His hair wasn’t much shorter, only an inch or two, just long enough to graze his shoulders. Jones had done something to his hair, put a shape in it or something; even wet, Dan could see that the curls were much more defined. 

“Looks good, don’t it?” Jones said, stooping down to rest his head on Dan’s shoulder. His image winked back at Dan from the mirror.

Dan reached up to trace the shape of Jones’s lips in the mirror. He wished that he could touch Jones for real—his skin burned with it. Jones’s face was so close to his own—

Jones cleared his throat, lowering the mirror. “Your moustache’s getting a bit long, too. Could trim that for you, too, if you wanted.” He dropped the mirror on the counter with a clattering sound. “Wouldn’t take but a minute.”

Dan nodded. Jones smoothed down the hairs with his thumb to lay them straight, the calloused tip dragging against the dry skin of Dan’s lips. Then he reached for the scissors; the cool flat of the blade replacing the warmth of his fingers against Dan’s lips.

Jones snipped, trimming and shaping Dan’s moustache, his face only inches from Dan’s own. His eyes were focused on Dan’s mouth, and little bits of hair fluttered onto Dan’s lips. Jones used his thumb to brush them away, and Dan pursed his lips, shaping his mouth into a kiss.

Jones’s eyes went wide and dark, his pupils dilating. He pushed his thumb between Dan’s lips, his gaze still fixated on Dan’s mouth, and Dan dared to skim his tongue along the pad of Jones’s fingertip.

The moment broke. Jones pulled his thumb out of Dan’s mouth, and for a moment, Dan thought he’d fucked up, done something Jones could not forgive. He started to apologize, but Jones didn’t give him a chance—in an instant, he slid into Dan’s lap, wrapping his thighs around Dan’s waist and sucking Dan’s tongue into his mouth.

Jones tasted like candy and coffee, all things that were good. While Dan was gaining an appreciation for coffee now that he was sober, he still preferred the taste of coffee in Jones’s mouth to sipping it directly from the cup.

“Fuck,” Jones breathed, “I fucking missed you, missed _this_ , missed _fucking_ you...”

Dan yelped, bucking in the chair. The hard seat was making his back ache, and the added weight of Jones in his lap wasn’t helping, but he didn’t dare complain. If he was sore tomorrow, well, it would be the kind of sweet soreness akin to the feeling he got after a good, deep fucking. Every time his back ached, he’d remember Jones on his lap, the taste and weight and feel of him.

Jones gasped against Dan’s lips, right into his mouth. He scrabbled a hand over Dan’s naked back, yanking the towel from his shoulders and gently running his fingernails over Dan’s skin. Dan shuddered; his cock, which had been on the verge of an erection through the entire haircut, hardened against Jones’s arse, and he grabbed onto Jones’s thighs, pressing him down as he rubbed against him, desperate for the friction.

He’d been holding himself back for days; there was no way he could control himself now, not with Jones on his lap and giving him everything he’d craved. 

Jones panted into Dan’s mouth, raking his fingernails more roughly against Dan’s skin. He shifted in Dan’s lap to rub his erection against Dan’s stomach. This time, when Dan cried out, it was in pain.

Even far gone as he was, Jones recognized the sound as one of pain. He jumped off Dan’s lap like he’d been burned. “Fuck, Dan—you all right? I didn’t mean to...”

Dan stood. His hip throbbed, but the change in position relieved some of the pressure. “Shhh, Jonesy, it’s OK,” he said, wrapping Jones into a hug. Jones felt small and slack in his arms, all the piss and vinegar gone out of him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jones blubbered into his chest.

“You didn’t,” Dan said, running a hand over Jones’s back in soothing circles. “It was the chair, yeah? Not you.” He stuck his leg out and shook it; the stinging pins-and-needles feeling had already begun to recede. “I should have said something... I just didn’t want you to stop.”

Jones wiped his nose against Dan’s shoulder. “Dunno why I’m cryin’. I’m all fucked up. Didn’t sleep last night... forgot how lumpy that fucking couch is.”

Dan led Jones to the bedroom. Jones must have been exhausted—he fell asleep almost immediately after crawling into bed. Unless he was crashing from excessive sleep deprivation, he had trouble falling asleep, and when he did, tossed and turned; for someone who spent all day listening to music at a deafening volume, he was a light sleeper. He blamed it on Dan’s snoring, but Dan was beginning to suspect that Jones had likely developed at least a mild case of tinnitus from all the noise.

No matter. Dan laid next to him, his head resting on Jones’s chest, rising and falling with the cadence of his breath, listening to life in him. Jones mumbled something in his sleep, and Dan had to strain to hear: _tell me if it hurts._

The realization hit him all at once: it hurt Jones when Dan hurt himself. Jones had been trying to tell Dan as much for years—it had just taken Dan until now to understand. He understood, now, why Jones had had to stay away for so long—he couldn’t have come back until he’d known that Dan wasn’t going to hurt himself again. And the booze had been Dan’s very favorite way to hurt: a long, slow, indifferent kind of suicide that numbed enough of the pain that it hadn’t felt like suicide at the time.

He and Jones had known each other a long time. Ten years. And Dan had spent most of that hurting himself in one way or another: even if he wasn’t throwing himself out of windows and breaking his back so badly that he’d required surgery, or drinking so much he blacked out and making the kind of bad life decisions that ended up with him being photographed with his cock out and pissing, or even forcing himself to work at SugarApe long after the name change and subjecting himself to Jonnatan Yeah?’s specific brand of editorial sadism, hiding his pain because he didn’t want to upset Jones was still hurting himself.

He tucked an errant lock of Jones’s hair behind his ear, exposing Jones’s forehead. Jones always had a fringe covering it, and it looked strangely naked and vulnerable in the dim midafternoon light filtering through the gap in Jones’s blackout curtains. Dan pressed a kiss to Jones’s forehead and whispered a promise into Jones’s ear: “I promise to tell you when it hurts.”

Jones smiled in his sleep. Dan thought he must have understood.

It wasn’t even their usual lunch date, but Claire had insisted on treating Dan for helping her finish her proposal. She’d even splurged on a Michelin-starred restaurant instead of their usual cafe, the kind of pretentious white-tablecloth place that Dan usually avoided at all costs.

Turned out that Dan’s derision depended heavily on whether or not he was the one footing the bill. 

Claire was waiting for him at a table by the door in the tiny trattoria. She’d ordered a glass of champagne for herself, and ginger ale in a champagne glass for Dan, which was sitting on the table at his place setting, just waiting for him to sit down. Dan was horrified to realize that he appreciated the gesture, so he sneered at his sister instead of greeting her properly.

Claire didn’t seem to mind. She lifted her glass with a jubilant “Toast!” She was pink-cheeked, lisping a bit; it was obviously not her first celebratory drink: her Northern accent always came out more when she was drinking. 

Not that Dan was any different. Living in London for two decades had trained the accent out of his speech, unless he was angry or fucked up. Since he hadn’t been getting fucked up, and being sober meant he had a lot more time and attention to work on his anger, he hadn’t heard the old speech patterns in his voice in ages. Hearing Claire’s accent come out made him feel strangely nostalgic and fond.

He’d hated everything about Leeds; in fact, he’d left for London as soon as he’d gotten his acceptance letter from uni and never looked back. In the early years, their parents had tried to convince Dan to come back for a visit; he’d always come up with some implausible excuse to avoid taking the trip, and eventually they’d stopped trying.

Maybe he could take Jones up for visit, show him around the landscape where Dan had spent his formative years. Jones had invited him to visit his parents in Brighton; perhaps he’d appreciate it if Dan reciprocated...

“C’mon Dan, toast!” Claire repeated, too high on champagne and her recently-completed proposal to notice Dan getting all solipsistic.

Dan raised his glass and clinked it against hers. “To Antifa!” Claire chirped, downing her glass in one go.

Dan sipped at his, unable to match Claire’s enthusiasm. 

“Fuck, I can’t believe it’s finished,” Claire said. She fished in her purse for her cigarettes, forgetting about the recently-enacted indoor smoking ban until the waiter showed up with an armful of appetizers and a disapproving glare, causing Claire to sheepishly put her cigarettes back in her pocketbook.

Dan’s phone pinged. Ignoring Claire’s derisive look, he checked his messages—Diane had sent him a picture of Noodle. The kitten was holding a fuzzy toy mouse in its mouth, looking pleased with himself. _Still planning on coming by tomorrow to meet this little fella? He’s anxious to find his forever home._

Dan rubbed his forehead. Fuck, he’d forgotten to mention it completely.

He forwarded the image to Jones. _You know how you keep talking about adopting a cat? My friend Diane’s got some kittens, if you’ve got some time tomorrow to meet them._

His phone pinged with a response almost instantly. Unfortunately, before Dan could read it, Claire snatched his phone away. “What the fuck?” he growled.

Claire shoved a slice of bruschetta into her mouth. “You ‘n Jones ‘re getting a kitten?”

“Maybe,” Dan said, grabbing his phone back. Jones had texted a long string of emojis. Dan could barely decipher them at the best of times, but judging from the numerous smileys and exclamation points, Jones seemed excited about the prospect of becoming a cat owner. He was about to type a response when another message came through: _what time shld we go over there?_

“What the hell are you guys doing adopting a living, breathing animal?” Claire interrupted. “You can barely be trusted to keep yourselves alive.”

Dan’s hair bristled. “Jones is good with strays,” he hissed. Claire reached for the last bruschetta, and he swatted her away to grab it for himself.

“Huh,” Claire said, squinting at Dan. “You’re cranky as a cat, and Jones likes taking care of you. Maybe it’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Dan griped.

Claire was saved from having to answer by the waiter arriving with the main course. She cut a piece of veal and shoved it into her mouth. 

At least when her mouth was full of food, Claire couldn’t talk. That was probably why she had such fat arms. 

Diane lived in a narrow brick walkup on a tree-lined residential street in northern Hoxditch, on the border of Whitmore. Unlike the rest of the area, which was mostly ugly cement-block estates, Diane’s block was lined with quaint row houses, their gardens overflowing with flowers. Diane’s building had potted plants lining the stairs, and Dan almost tripped on one as he walked up the front steps to ring Diane’s buzzer.

Jones stood next to him, practically vibrating with excitement. “Fuck, I can’t believe we’re gonna be cat daddies together,” Jones exclaimed.

“You’re in charge of the litterbox,” Dan said, feeling strangely chuffed at Jones’s insistence that they raise the cat together.

“Fuck off, we share litterbox duties,” Jones said, elbowing Dan in the ribs. 

Dan was about to elbow him back when Diane buzzed them in. Jones bounded up the three flights of stairs, waiting impatiently on the fourth-floor landing for Dan to catch up. 

“Which flat is hers?” Jones called down the stairs.

“4B,” Dan panted. He really needed to stop smoking so much and take up regular exercise... 

Jones knocked on the door just as Dan made his way to the top of the stairs.

Diane opened the door. She seemed a little taken aback at Jones’s appearance—he was wearing a pair of fishnet stockings with the crotch cut out under his artfully-torn black woman’s blouse as a kind of DIY fishnet shirt, and he’d applied extra eyeliner for the occasion. To her credit, she recovered quickly. “Oh, you must be Jones,” she said. “C’mon in, boys.”

Diane’s flat was small and cluttered. The tiny sitting room was crowded with overstuffed furniture that made it seem even smaller than it was. It was the perfect size for the tiny, birdlike Diane and a shortarse like Jones, but Dan felt claustrophobic.

“Can I get you some tea?” Diane asked.

“‘M more of a coffee drinker, if you got it,” Jones said.

“I’m a recovering alcoholic, love—I never not have coffee,” Diane chirped. She ducked behind one of the overstuffed armchairs and yanked out a cardboard box with the lid cut off. Inside, a mama cat was nursing her five babies. “You all take a minute and get acquainted with each other, I’ll be back in a jif.”

Jones crouched down on the floor to get a closer look. “Wow,” he said. “Look at ‘em, Dan—they’re all so tiny!”

The mama cat blinked lazily as the kittens suckled at her teats. Most of them lay on their bellies, kneading calmly as they fed. One black kitten climbed curiously over its brothers and sisters to peek over the edge of the box, its wide blue eyes blearily blinking at Jones. 

Jones reached out a cautious hand to stroke its tiny nose with a finger. The kitten licked at his fingertip gently, then bit down with its tiny teeth. “Oi, Dan, I think the little bastard likes me!” 

“Watch your mouth,” Dan scolded. “That’s our son you’re talking about.”

Diane walked back into the sitting room, balancing a tea tray with three steaming mugs. “I know Dan likes milk in his coffee, but I didn’t know what you prefer, so I have cream and sugar and Splenda...”

“Just sugar,” Jones said.

“And lots of it,” Dan added.

Diane shot Dan concerned look as she dumped several heaping teaspoons of sugar into Jones’s coffee and gave it a stir. Dan shrugged; he’d long since given up on trying to wean Jones off sugar. Dinae tutted, but handed Jones the mug, chuckling as she saw the kitten hanging onto Jones by his teeth. “That’s my Noodle! Such a spunky little man,” she said, completely oblivious to the double entendre she’d uttered.

Jones laughed. The kitten, spooked by the loud, braying noise of his laughter, retreated back into the box, nuzzling his mama, who swatted him away.

Diane reached into the box and scooped the kitten up, depositing him into Jones’s lap. “I warned Dan he was a bit of a handful, but he said you wouldn’t mind.”

“Course I don’t,” Jones said, giving the cat an affectionate, if aggressive, scratch on its chain, “I live with _him_ , don’t I?” He nudged Dan playfully, just so there was no doubt in Diane’s mind to whom he was referring.

Dan crossed his arms and huffed.

Diane laughed. “Indeed,” she said primly. “You two have been living together for a while?” 

She was definitely angling for more information, and not even being subtle about it, neither. Dan quickly formulated a noncommittal answer, but Jones beat him to the punch. “Ten years, more ‘r less.”

“Good for you,” Diane said, settling into one of her overstuffed armchairs. 

Jones joined Dan on the couch, Noodle in his lap. The kitten promptly clawed its way up Jones’s shirt; Dan thought that Jones would get upset about putting holes into the silky fabric of his blouse, but he was too enthralled by the little, furry beast to care.

“I have to say, Jones, that Dan hasn’t told us much about you,” Diane said, lighting a cigarette. Dan followed her example, and Diane nudged the fancy cut-crystal ashtray, obviously some kind of antique, into the middle of the coffee table.

“Ain’t much to know, really,” Jones shrugged.

“I _did_ say that he’s a DJ,” Dan protested.

Diane pushed her glasses down her nose and gave Dan a significant look, one that said, _Nathan said that, not you_ , but she was far too polite to say it aloud. “Did Dan happen to mention anything about Nathan’s sober rave this Saturday?”

“Sober rave?” Jones said, cocking his head at Dan. The kitten in his lap mimicked his movements, and both pairs of wide blue eyes stared at Dan expectantly. 

“Don’t get any ideas,” Dan warned, “it’s a Trashbat party, except without any drugs or alcohol to make it tolerable.”

Jones rolled his eyes. “Even when you was off yer tits, you never tolerated ‘em.”

“Didn’t Dan tell you?” Diane asked. “Nathan’s looking for a DJ to fill out the roster.”

Both Diane and Jones stared at Dan, awaiting a response. Dan cleared his throat. “I may have, uh, forgotten to mention it.” Forgotten on purpose, but they didn’t have to know that.

The mama cat, obviously tired of suckling her many greedy spawn, jumped onto Diane’s lap, stretching and curling up with a loud purr as her kittens mewed pitifully. “Oh, that’s a shame,” Diane said, stroking the cat’s back. “It _is_ a paying gig and all.”

The kitten chose that moment to nibble on Jones’s hair. Jones glared at Dan, depositing the misbehaving kitten into Dan’s lap. “You can stay home and take care of our son,” he groused, fishing his phone out of the pocket of his skintight drainpipes, “but _I’m_ going to the rave.” He tapped a furious message into his phone while Dan chanced a peek over his shoulder. 

The kitten promptly attacked Dan’s hand with his claws. “The fuck do you have Barley’s number for?” Dan asked, shaking his hand free. “You hate him almost as much as I do.”

“Yeah, he’s full of shit,” Jones said, not looking up from the message he was typing, “but he _also_ pays twice the going rate for his Trashbat parties.” He sent off the message, and shoved his phone back into his pocket, which required an uncomfortable-looking twisting maneuver that made Dan’s spine twist with sympathy pains. “I’m the man of the house. Can’t be turning down work—I got you and our son to provide for now, ain’t I?”

“So you’ll be taking Noodle, then?” Diane asked.

Jones looked at Dan, his eyes wide and pleading. The cat on Dan’s lap stopped trying to poke holes in his skin, staring up at Dan with an expression that matched Jones’s exactly. “Sure,” he said, sighing in defeat. They hadn’t even taken the little brat home, and the two of them were already ganging up on him.

Diane clapped, causing the cat on her lap to retreat. “Oh, that’s wonderful! I’m so glad Noodle will be going to a good home.”

“You’ll have to wear your headphones when you mix,” Dan teased Jones. “Cats have very sensitive ears, you know.”

Jones rolled his eyes and poked Noodle in the belly. The cat promptly bit him. 

“Dan’s right, you know,” Diane said. “Especially when he’s small—you don’t want him to go deaf now, do you?”

“Huh?” Jones asked, distracted by the kitten gnawing on his hand. Dan had to admit it was cute, though only because his claws and teeth were tiny and incapable of much damage. He shuddered to imagine the cat fully-grown.

“See? He’s practically deaf already,” Dan teased.

Jones’s mobile chimed, and he reached for it. “I’m not deaf. See? I heard that.” He pumped his arm as he read the message. “Fuck yeah, it’s official—I’m opening on sober rave night!”

“Isn’t Nathan such a nice young man?” Diane said. Jones glanced at Dan in alarm, but Diane was oblivious to their reaction. “I’m so glad you’ll be joining us—we’re all going, you can meet the rest of Dan’s friends!”

Jones’s expression changed to one of surprise. “Friends?” he repeated.

Dan’s first instinct was to protest, but it would have been rude. And, Dan had to admit, however grudgingly, that the clique of recovering alcoholics from his meetings had, somehow, become his _friends._ He certainly hated them less than any of his coworkers from his SugaRape days, had more in common with them than any of his former friends from uni, who were all married with children and had respectable jobs at respectable publications. “Uh, yeah, the people from my meetings...? I told you about them. Remember? My... sponsor?”

Something flashed in Jones’s eyes, something possessive—jealousy? It was confusing, so Dan turned his attention to the cat in his lap. The little shit grabbed his wrist between its paws, then butted his head against Dan’s hand, asking for pets. Despite himself, Dan was charmed by the little devil. 

Diane changed the subject. “You want to take him home today? I noticed you didn’t bring a carrier... I have a spare you can borrow ‘til you get a chance to buy one of your own...”

“We’ll take him,” Dan said quickly, surprising himself. 

Jones took one look at Dan and the kitten, cuddling together, and smiled. “Don’t worry, Dan, you’re gonna be a great cat daddy.”

Dan bared his teeth, and Diane and Jones both burst out laughing. He ignored them, decided to rub the kitten under the chin until he started rumbling.

They left Diane’s an hour later, loaded down with various cat paraphernalia that Diane had foisted on them. Jones had an overflowing blue Ikea bag over his shoulder, sagging with the weight of tinned cat food, litter and a litterbox, while Dan lugged the clunky purple cat carrier with Noodle inside.

“Diane’s nice,” Jones said.

“She’s alright,” Dan agreed.

Jones shifted the bag on his shoulder. “You two seem pretty close.”

“It’s the alcoholism,” Dan quipped. Jones looked confused, so he elaborated: “Sometimes the meetings can get pretty.... intense. Everyone telling about their rock bottom and all, sharing their war stories... you get pretty close, pretty quick.”

“So, it’s like that for everyone?”

Dan shrugged. The cat carrier clanked against his thigh; Noodle let out a pathetic little whine, and he righted himself quickly. “Not everyone. Some people are only there because they have to be, because of their probation or whatever, but a few of us... We hang out sometimes.”

Jones hummed, the same tuneless melody he always hummed when he was thinking. “Dan? How come you never—you don’t talk much about it with me.”

Dan paused mid-stride, putting a hand on Jones’s arm and turning Jones to face him. “I don’t have to,” he said. “You were _there_.”

“I might have been there,” Jones said, “but I was only watchin’ it happen. You never told me what it was like for you, goin’ through all that...” His voice faded on the last word. 

Dan furrowed his brow. “What would you want to know that for?”

“I dunno, maybe cos I give a shit about you?” Jones scraped the heel of his boot across the sidewalk with a high-pitched scratching sound that made Dan grimace. “Dunno why that’s so hard for you to believe.”

Dan did put down the cat carrier. Even now, after Jones had come back home, even as they navigated the new normal between them, he found he had difficulty believing it. Not that he thought that Jones was incapable of love and kindness (rather the opposite, really)—more like, Dan realized, he didn’t think he was _worth_ Jones’s love and kindness. Jones pushed Dan’s bangs off his forehead. Even after his recent haircut, they were still a little bit too long and got in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” Dan said. “I should have—I thought, I don’t know what I thought? Maybe that if I talked with you about it, you’d remember how much of a shit I am, and change your mind....”

“I guess I ain’t used to you havin’ friends and all,” Jones admitted. “Used to having you all to myself.”

“Me neither,” Dan admitted. “I’m not very good at it, I don’t think.” Jones aside, at the age of forty, Dan had never before had a connection with another person that wasn’t based on alcohol and mutual self-destruction. Granted, his friends were all sober alcoholics, so their friendship was based on alcohol, but _not_ drinking it, which seemed like an important distinction to make.

Jones smiled softly, reaching for Dan’s hand and lacing their fingers together. “Will you come to the rave with me?” Jones asked. “Introduce me to all your mates?” His voice was small and unsure, as if expecting Dan to refuse. 

Dan hesitated. All his instincts were screaming at him to say _no,_ but three weeks of daily AA meetings had taught him that his instincts were shit, and he should avoid listening to them at all costs. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Jones clutched at his chest dramatically. “Thank fuck! Be awkward, goin’ to a party where the only bloke I know is Nathan Barley.”

Dan shuddered to think about it. He was about to say as much when he was interrupted by a loud yowl from the cat carrier.

“Looks like our son’s anxious to get home,” Jones said. He started walking, and yanked Dan along behind him. Dan picked up the carrier and followed. He sympathized with the cat—he, too, liked being home, curled up someplace warm and familiar, preferably next to Jones. For all that Noodle resembled Jones, with his jet-black fur and round blue eyes, Dan thought that he and the cat might be able to come to an understanding of their own. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Cut Your Bangs" was one of the songs I listened to on repeat to finish this monster of a fic. I prefer the [Girlpool cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfO_xb9124U) (I'm a sucker for pretty harmonies and female singers), but the [Radiator Hospital original](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NXxQbtjChQ) is pretty cool too.
> 
> One note: Radiator Hospital is a modern punk band, and "Cut Your Bangs" was released in 2014. I twisted the timeline to fit Dan's characterization as a music buff with a penchant for obscure 90s-era grunge and punk bands.


	6. vi.

The cat settled into his new home quickly. Jones promptly rechristened him as Joey Ramone, in honor of his favorite black-haired punk idol. They’d bought him a scratching post, and far too many toys, but Joey still preferred clawing the couch and attacking their feet to any of the toys they’d bought him. 

As much as Jones doted on the cat, Joey clearly preferred Dan. His favorite spot in the house was Dan’s lap--he couldn’t sit down without Joey Ramone leaping up to demand attention. To Jones’s eternal consternation, the cat seemed nonplussed by Dan’s snoring, and preferred sleeping on Dan’s pillow to sleeping next to Jones on the couch.

Jones exited the bathroom, where he’d been doing his makeup for the last hour in preparation for his gig. He’d bleached and dyed the tips of his shaggy black mullet with day-glo colored streaks, and his makeup was similarly bright: he’d done some complicated thing with his eyeshadow, a gradient of neon blues, yellows, and pinks. “You ready, Dan?”

“Can’t get up,” Dan said. “Cat on my lap.”

“I feed the bastard and clean up his shit,” Jones griped, “why the hell does he like you better?”

Dan scratched the purring bundle of fur in his lap. Joey rumbled more loudly, turning over onto his back to expose his belly. “You never sit still.” 

“You’re fuzzy and lazy,” Jones said, “he prolly thinks you’re some kind of big, smelly cat.” He reached over Dan’s lap to rub Joey’s belly, and Joey promptly sank his teeth and claws into Jones’s hand, making Jones yelp. 

“Oi! You bastard!”

“Careful how you speak to our son,” Dan scolding teasingly. “His father might have come from the alley, but he’s got _two_ daddies now.”

Joey Ramone had raked a thin scratch near the base of Jones’s thumb. He lifted his hand to his mouth and licked the blood off. “You think the bastard’s old enough to be left on his own?”

Dan looked down at the cat, who smugly licked his paw and began washing his face. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“C’mon,” Jones said, pulling Dan off the couch and handing him a crate overflowing with records and the macabre toys he used to decorate his decks during a gig, “I need you to carry this for me, yeah?”

It took about twenty minutes to walk to the small club Barley had reserved for the night. From the outside, it didn’t look like much, just another quasi-industrial storefront on a block that was all tool and die shops and construction firms. On the inside, however, Trashbat had transformed the space into an idiot’s playground: all blacklights and strobe lights, expensive speakers everywhere. The DJ’s booth was in the middle of the floor on a small platform, a massive rotoscoping multicolor light display projected onto the wall behind it.

“Whoa,” Jones said, “Barley really went all out, yeah?”

Barley appeared, as if summoned by the utterance of his name, like a really shit Bloody Mary.

“Danbo!” he shouted, clapping Dan on the back, nearly causing him to drop Jones’s records. “Glad you made it!”

“Said he wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jones quipped. Dan glared at him; Jones returned the glare with a mischievous smile. 

“Really?” Nathan asked, looking annoyingly chuffed. “Hey Dan, I still got that Preacherman costume--I was thinking you could give a sermon about the power of sobriety or something for the website...?”

 _Not for a million dollars, you twat,_ Dan thought, but Jones spoke first. “He’d love to.”

“Dope! You know, I never told you, but Dan here’s the whole reason I got sober in the first place,” Nathan said, turning to Jones. “It’ll be brilliant--the ‘whole drunk priest gets sober and redeems himself’ thing. You’ll see the, crowd’ll eat it up.” Nathan bounded off into the crowd, calling “Lemme get you your collar, Preacherman,” over his shoulder as he went off in search of Dan’s robes.

“Why the hell would you do that?” Dan griped.

“It’s cute, the crush Nathan has on you.”

Dan sputtered. “That’s disgusting--”

Jones shut him up with a kiss. It wasn’t much of a kiss, just a soft brush of lips against lips, but it was more than he’d dared since the night Dan had gotten drunk and he’d run off to Brighton.

Dan stood, frozen in place. The kiss had lasted only an instant, but Dan’s lips were still tingling.

“Guess I should go set up,” Jones said softly. “Try not to get in too much trouble without me, yeah?”

It wasn’t likely, considering that this was a sober rave and Dan was sober. Most of his regretful life decisions had been alcohol-induced; without alcohol, there wasn’t much for Dan to do, other than stand in a corner somewhere, nodding his head to the music and glaring at anyone who got too close. 

Of course, that lasted only about five minutes, which was as long as it took for Claire to find him. “So you came after all,” she sniped.

Dan shrugged and downed his ginger ale. “Had to--Jones is playing tonight.”

Claire looked flabbergasted. She’d never been a fan of Jones’s noise. Dan took advantage of her silence to put his empty glass in her hand. “Get me another one of these? Ginger ale.”

Claire huffed something about always having to pay Dan’s way, but went to the bar anyway, probably for proof that Dan was _actually_ sober at a Trashbat rave, sober or not.

He’d managed only one sip of his drink when Robin flagged them down. “Yo, Dan! Ashcroft! Over here!” She was surrounded by a group that included Richard and Diane, some of the more occasional attendees of their meeting, and a group of three or four butch-looking women that Dan assumed must have been players in the lesbian sex comedy that seemed to preoccupy most of Robin’s life outside of AA, all of whom were leering at Claire.

Robin immediately punched him in the arm, far too hard for the friendly greeting it was, but Dan was used to Robin’s violent tendencies and barely even flinched. Which was a good thing, because all four of the women in Robin’s entourage looked like they could beat him to a pulp with one arm tied behind their backs. 

“Oh, Dan, I’m so glad you made it!” Diane trilled, looking surprised yet pleased to discover that Dan had kept his word. 

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Dan said drily, all the while looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. 

The group burst out laughing. “That’s our Ashcroft,” Richard wheezed, short of breath from laughing so hard. “Nathan says you’re the life of the party.”

“Where’s your young man?” Diane asked, far too innocently for a woman of her age and varied life experience. Not for the first time, Dan wondered how much of her daffy, overly-polite personality was just a cover for her true, more devious nature. No one ever expected the prim, cardigan-wearing nana to be a devil in disguise.

Dan made a vague gesture over at the DJ booth. “Setting up. He’s got the first set of the night.”

“Oooh, are we actually gonna meet Jones?” Robin asked. 

“Depends,” Dan said, eying the harem of women flanking Robin, “on if you introduce me to your women first.”

Robin cackled. She flung an arm over the shoulder of the spikey-haired woman with more piercings in her nose than Dan thought physically possible. “Well, this is my partner Felix. And this is my girlfriend Annie, but we call her Anthrax, and my girlfriend’s girlfriend Ettie, or Ebola, and my other girlfriend, Raven.”

All four of the women punched Dan in greeting. He rubbed his arm, certain he’d find a bruise there the next morning. He was saved from being beaten into a pulp by their enthusiastic greeting by Felix, who leered at Claire. “Dan didn’t introduce us.”

“Ugh, he never does, he’s so _rude_ ,” Claire huffed. “I’m Claire, Dan’s sister.”

The lesbians took turns fawning over Claire, who was _glowing_ from the attention. Thankfully, Dan was saved from having to watch much longer by Richard, who called, “I’m heading to the bar! Who wants a soda...? Don’t be shy, it’s on me!”

Several minutes later, a ginger ale garnished with maraschino cherries and a day-glo tiny umbrella in his hand, Dan was able to retreat to a corner. The party was picking up--only Nathan Barley could have promoted an event without drugs or alcohol so relentlessly as to attract the Shoreditch elite, as well as the rabble. 

The canned electronic music that was relentlessly pumping over the soundsystem suddenly cut off. The speakers buzzed with static, and then a high-pitched screech. Dan turned to face the DJ booth; Jones was hunched over his deck, headphones on, staring intently at his board.

Nathan Barley, weasel that he was, was onstage, hogging the mic. “Welcome to the first-ever Trashbat sober rave! We’re putting the taint back in restraint! Give it up for DJ Jones!”

Jones adjusted one of the dials on his mixer, and the room erupted into a riot of noise. The crowd went wild, not seeming to mind that Jones’s characteristic chaotic cloud of sound was not exactly danceable--he switched time signatures randomly, and often cut the beat just before the drop to amplify the found noises he was so fond of, things like the screeching of breaking trains or the burst of gunshots he’d lifted from the American gangster movies of which he was fond.

Dan stood still as the people surrounding him jerked spasmodically to the music. Many of them had abandoned any pretense of moving to the beat, and flailed their arms and banged their heads rhythmically as Jones juggled a series of 80’s top-40 hooks with industrial sounds, deconstructing the familiar songs into something menacing.

The idiots flailed harder, trying to keep up with Jones’s chaos. Dan didn’t even try. He was content to just sit back and listen... The erratic mix of tones, bleeps, and distorted strains of Cindi Lauper and Billy Idol mixed with obscure early 90s grunge bands like Screaming Trees and Coffin Break blurred into some kind of candyfloss nightmare, the kind of sonic landscape whose distortion cast shadows onto the bright colors and sweetness to disguise the evil lurking beneath. He didn’t need to spasm around like a spastic to appreciate Jones’s music. In fact, he preferred it this way--in the midst of all the chaos, Dan found stillness.

He watched Jones’s entire set, only looking away to accept the ginger ales his friends kept buying him. Jones moved with the music, more energetically than anyone in the crowd. He’d always been unable to keep still when he was spinning, and his skin soon began to shine with exertion. He looked good, all sweaty with his makeup smearing; Dan’s cock pulsed, remembering the many times Jones had fucked him after a gig, all sticky and sweat-slick... nothing gave Jones the horn quite like a successful gig.

Finally, Jones finished his set. The PA blasted canned electronica as Jones packed his gear and the next DJ set up, and Dan turned to his friends, eavesdropping on Robin’s current lesbian drama. Claire evidently had joined Robin’s harem for the night--she was dancing dirty with Robin and Felix. Dan wondered absently if, before night’s end, Claire would do the sort of reckless thing Ashcrofts seemed genetically predisposed to do without even alcohol to blame it on, then decided he wanted no part of it, so he turned back to Jones and closed his eyes to focus on the music.

He was listening so intently he startled when Jones slid a damp arm around his waist. “Did you hear that!” His skin was still covered with a sheen of sweat, his hair plastered damply to his forehead. He slid his damp arms around Dan’s waist. 

Dan wrapped his arms around Jones, who nuzzled into his chest. Dan pressed a kiss to Jones’s sweat-soaked scalp. His lips came away moist, and Dan licked the dampness off his lips; they tasted like salt.

Jones tipped his chin up, angling for a kiss. Dan was about to oblige, but he was interrupted by someone thumping on his back.

Nathan was standing behind him, uncomfortably close, the much-abused Preacherman costume sagging over his forearms. “Dan! I been lookin’ for you.”

Dan pinched the bridge of his nose. Barley always had the most awful timing--sobriety had only sharpened his uncanny instinct for interrupting Dan at the worst possible moment. Barley stood smiling stupidly with the priest’s robes cradled in his outstretched arms; the hem dragged on the ground. 

“Yeah, give the man some privacy to change, why don’t you?” Jones said. 

“I’ve seen Dan with his dick out. What’s a little skin between friends?” Barley asked, unsubtly looking Dan over. Was Barley... checking him out? The idea was too disgusting to bear--Dan was perfectly sober, but his stomach lurched, threatening to spew the three ginger ales he’d drunk right onto the floor.

“Sobriety changed me. I’m a modest man now,” Dan explained. He was proud of himself for managing not to gag. 

Barley looked positively pleased. “Ah, getting into character already, Preach?”

Jones nudged himself between Dan and Barley. “Thanks for the robes, kindly fuck off, yeah?” Jones said, slinging a possessive arm around Dan’s waist. Barley gave Dan one last, lingering look, but was thankfully distracted by a young woman wearing neon fur. She resembled an unwashed Muppet, like Oscar the Grouch’s long-lost daughter who’d run away to be a groupie for Phish and eaten too much of the bad acid. 

She dragged Barley away, and Dan sighed. “Thank fuck he’s gone. What the hell is wrong with that bastard?”

“I told you,” Jones said, “he’s got a crush on you.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Dan groaned.

Jones’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Need some help with those robes?”

Dan had been intending to pull them on over his clothing right where he stood, but there was something in Jones’s expression that made him reconsider. “Could do.”

Jones’s eyes flashed dark. “C’mere,” Jones said, yanking Dan through the swarming, sweaty mass of writhing bodies on the dancefloor over to the line for the bathrooms by the arm around his waist.

The line for the bathroom was several people deep, but Jones cut his way to the front. “Everybody outta the way. My friend here’s gonna spew!”

The crowd parted with a chorus of “eew”, “disgusting”, and other disgusted epithets. Jones yanked open the door, and shoved Dan inside.

Dan had hardly managed to close the door behind him before Jones was on him. He draped his whole body over Dan’s, the weight of him pressing the knob into Dan’s back. Dan wriggled into a more comfortable position just in time--Jones was already yanking Dan’s shirt off.

He bit down on Dan’s collarbone, then trailed a series of toothy kisses up Dan’s neck. “Fuck,” he panted into Dan’s ear, “hate the way that Barley looks at you--doesn’t he know he can’t have you? You’re _mine_ \--”

Dan shivered. He turned his head, slotting their lips together. Jones’s tongue slipped into his mouth, thick, wet, and warm.

Jones was a messy kisser, all teeth and tongue. He bit down on Dan’s bottom lip, drawing it between his teeth until it almost hurt before releasing it, then he licked over Dan’s lips before shoving his tongue so far into Dan’s mouth that he could feel it against his molars.

They pulled apart, both gasping. Someone knocked on the door, then yanked the doorknob. Dan didn’t remember locking it behind them, but he must have--they eventually gave up. 

Jones dropped to his knees, where Dan had dropped his preacher’s robes; the fabric pooled around where he was crouched. He nuzzled the bulge in Dan’s jeans, blindly groping for the button of his fly, then yanked at the waistband. For a moment Dan was sure that he would rip the button right off, but luckily the button gave, and Jones undid the fly, shoving Dan’s jeans down his thighs.

Dan’s cock was poking out of the fly of his boxers. Jones cradled it in a deft hand, stroking a few times, all the while staring up at Dan. His eye makeup was smeared, his mouth was red from the aggressive kissing. Still maintaining the eye contact, Jones licked his lips, then swallowed Dan’s cock down to the root.

It was all Dan could do to keep himself upright. His body exploded into a mass of sensation--it had been _weeks_ since he’d been touched like this. He’d been rubbing himself raw from all the pent-up desire since Jones had come home, but even the most indulgent wank couldn’t possibly compare to the feel of Jones’s warm, wet mouth swallowing him whole.

Jones’s mouth was warm and wet. He pumped his head up and down, using his tongue to tease at the underside of Dan’s cock, scraping his teeth against the sensitive head in the way that made Dan’s thighs quiver with the effort of holding him upright. He reached down to stroke Jones’s head, and Jones _growled_ around his cock, wrapped his hands around Dan’s wrists, and held them in place against the wall.

Dan tipped his head back, knocking it against the door with a loud _thump._ For a moment, he saw stars. Then Jones sucked him into his throat and _hummed_ , and Dan was lost--all the pent-up spunk in his balls rushed toward the tip of his prick, and Dan whined, “Jones--fuck, Jones--I’m gonna--”

Jones released one of Dan’s wrists from his grasp to cradle his balls. Dan almost lost it right then and there, but then Jones slapped them. The sting was enough to bring him back from the brink, but Dan’s mind was mush--all he could do was babble. He didn’t dare move his free hand from the wall; even if Jones wasn’t physically holding him in place, he was pinned in place by Jones’s will alone.

Jones kept sucking him, gently slapping Dan’s testicles every time his nose brushed against Dan’s pubic hair. He worked up a steady rhythm, and then, not even the sting in Dan’s balls could keep him from coming.

Dan pushed his hips forward, trying to fuck into Jones’s mouth, but Jones lifted his mouth off of Dan’s cock. It quivered, red and spit-slick out in the open, and Jones grinned devilishly before slapping Dan’s balls one last time.

With a long, choked-sounding groan, Dan came. Jones gripped Dan’s cock by the base, a little too tightly, directing the stream of spunk to land on Dan’s stomach and chest. By the time Jones had milked the last few drops out of him, Dan’s chest, stomach, and pubes were streaked with semen.

Jones stood, opening his drainpipes and palming himself with his filthy hand, still wet and slick with Dan’s spunk. He mouthed at Dan’s chest, licking up some of his mess as he stroked himself, quickly, furiously--Dan was still breathing hard, his body slack and limp from the force of his orgasm. “Look at you, all filthy like, covered in your own spunk,” Jones breathed against his skin. Dan could only moan in response.

A moment later, Jones was coming in wet, warm spurts, adding his mess to Dan’s own. 

Dan grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser. He was about to wipe himself clean when Jones closed a hand around his wrist. “What’re you doin?” Jones growled.

“Just... cleaning up,” Dan said, swallowing.

“You don’t need to,” Jones said in that same rough, low voice. “You’re gonna go out there, dressed in your little Preacherman costume, and give your speech to the whole crowd, with my come still on you, in front of everyone.”

Dan’s muscles went weak. His grip on the towel loosened, and it floated to the floor.

Jones chuckled throatily. “Good boy.”

Dan’s cock throbbed again. If he hadn’t just come, he would have been hard in an instant, just from the sounds of those words in Jones’s mouth. 

“Go on, now,” Jones said. “Get dressed. Your public’s waiting on you, yeah?” He shoved his limp cock back into his jeans; Dan did the same, then picked the preacher’s robes up off the floor. 

They were wrinkled, white dust marks streaking the dark fabric. Dan pulled it over his head; the soft fabric clung to the wet spots on his chest and stomach, but he didn’t dare try to clean himself up. Not with Jones looking at him so hungrily.

They exited the bathroom, the crowd gathered at the door of the bathroom looking at them impatient and annoyed at having made them wait so long. Dan was certain they could see--and smell--the sex on them, but Jones just nodded and smiled, looking completely shagged out and unapologetic.

Claire shook her head and muttered disgust when she saw Dan return from the bathroom all pink-cheeked and messy-haired, but Robin just smiled and punched Dan’s shoulder again. “Good for you, Danny boy. You got your man after all.”

Dan tried to look indignant, but failed. He only succeeded in looking sheepish. “Oh, fuck--you can tell?”

“Don’t worry, it looks good on you,” Robin said. She looked like she was about to say something else, but Barley, in another example of his exemplary timing, appeared out of nowhere.

“Preach! I been looking all over for you!” he shouted. “C’mon, it’s almost time for your speech.”

Dan let Barley drag him to the stage. He stared down at the crowd, feeling like a preacher in a pulpit. The multicolored lights cast otherworldly shadows on their faces. 

“Yea, I was like you once,” Dan intoned. “Drunken, desperately searching for meaning at the bottom of the bottle. But no matter how many bottles of booze I swallowed down, I found only despair.” He continued his sermon for several minutes, speaking the words as soon they appeared in his mind. He didn’t even have to think about them--like divine inspiration, they bypassed his brain and flowed directly from his tongue.

He paused, surveying the crowd, which stared back at him in rapture. He took a deep breath. “I thought sobriety was a prison. But I was wrong. Sobriety will set you free!”

The crowd erupted into applause. Dan dropped the mic, and the speakers squealed with feedback before the sound technician cut it off. He stepped down from the stage, and the crowd parted around him, like he was Moses and they were the Red Sea. Some of the members of the crowd grabbed at him as he walked, but he shrugged them off, wanting nothing to do with any of them. He was focused only on Jones, who stood next to the rear wall of the club, beaming, his pride in Dan evident on his face.

Barley bounded over, a still-rapt expression on his face, and smacked a sloppy kiss onto Dan’s cheek.

Jones punched him.

“I think we should get out of here, yeah?” Jones said.

Dan laced their hands together, and the two of them ran out into the night, not stopping until the reached a secluded alley. Dan crumpled against the wall, gasping for air--fuck, he really needed to cut down on his smoking.

While he caught his breath, Jones peeked out of the alley. “Coast is clear,” he said. “What do you say we head on home, see what trouble our son has gotten into now?”

The cat had knocked over one of Jones’s abandoned coffee mugs and thrown up a hairball on the couch.

“You’re a bad kitty, a very bad cat,” Jones said. His words, though scolding, were spoken in a high pitch; Dan could hear the smile in his voice.

“Be nice to Joey,” Dan admonished, scooping the troublesome cat into his arms and smothering it with kisses. “Don’t listen to Jonesy, Joey. He’s had a long night; he’s gone all cranky.”

“Enough making out with the cat,” Jones said. “It’s time to go to sleep.”

“Jones?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for punching Barley for me.”

“He can’t have you. You’re _mine_ ,” Jones said, in that same growling, possessive voice he’d used when Dan had tried to wipe their mingled spunk from his chest. He edged closer to Dan, fitting their bodies together, Jones’s chest to Dan’s back.

Jones’s breath tickled the hair on the back of Dan’s neck. He might have been annoyed, but he was only thankful to have Jones close again. He didn’t intend to ever let Jones go again. 

Joey Ramone settled onto the pillow next to Dan’s head. It was a tight fit, between Jones’s head, Dan’s, and the cat, and Joey swatted at Jones’s hair until Jones grudgingly rolled over onto his own pillow.

“Your fucking cat poked me in the face,” Jones complained.

“He’s your cat too,” Dan murmured, half-asleep. The cat on his head rumbled in agreement, and it wasn’t long before he drifted off into a dream.

“You guys forgot this,” Robin said, depositing the box full of Jones’s records and nightmare Barbies at Dan’s feet at the meeting the day after the rave.

Dan flushed. They’d been in such a hurry to leave the club after the unfortunate Barley-punching incident that he hadn’t even thought about Jones’s toys. “Uh, sorry for running off like that last night.”

Nathan grinned. “It’s all good. We’re still friends, yeah?”

“Sure,” Dan said. The admission somehow didn’t make him sick to his stomach like he’d expected them to. “Um, sorry about your face.” Jones looked like a twink, but he could fight--Barley’s eye was bruised and swollen shut.

“S’all good,” Barley said. “You might have warned me your boyfriend was the jealous type.”

Boyfriend. Dan liked the sound of that. He’d been with Jones for a while, but he’d never really spoken the word aloud. Too bad Barley had said it first.

Robin clucked her tongue. “Now, Nathan, what did we learn about consent last night?”

“Um, that I need to ask before I kiss someone?”

Dan shot Robin a grateful glance. She winked back at him in response. “Today’s a big day for you, Danbo.”

Dan dropped the box in surprise. All of Jones’s demented toys spilled out on the floor--miniature cars with broken wheels, a horse that was missing its head, and more demented dolls than he could count. “Wait, what?”

“Did you forget?” Richard asked. “It’s your 30-day. Unless you went off a binge after you ran off--”

“No, no,” Dan protested, stooping to scoop Jones’s toys back into the box. “Still sober.” It was almost reassuring to know he could still make bad life decisions _without_ the help of alcohol. Getting sober hadn’t changed his personality completely, at least--he could still be himself, without being drunk.

He thought back to the small collection of poems he’d written over the last week or so during the snatches of time when Jones had been out of the flat or at least distracted enough not to pay attention to what Dan was doing. They were different from anything he’d written during his drinking days, but like Claire, he seemed to constantly revolve back to the same images and themes. Maybe there was hope for him after all.

“C’mon Dan, catch!” Robin said, tossing something small and heavy at Dan. 

He might have been sober, but he was still as uncoordinated as ever. The coin bounced off Dan’s skull and landed on the floor with a clatter. His friends laughed as he scrambled for it, but not idiotically--Dan felt less like he was being mocked, and more like his friends were fondly ribbing him for being a bit spastic.

The coin was bronze, embossed with the “1 month” on one side, and “To thine own self be true” on the other. Dan sat, just looking at it for a moment, surprised at how quickly the month had passed.

Before the meetings, every day without alcohol had felt like an eternity. The idea of never drinking again had seemed like hell. Yet, now Dan felt confident that he could go an eternity without drinking, and it might not even be so bad. “Thanks, guys,” he said softly. 

“First month is the longest,” Richard said, looking proud. “It gets easier from here on out.”

“Keep going to the meetings and you’ll be at 60 days in no time,” Diane reassured him. 

“Oooh, you can give another sermon at Trashbat’s next sober rave!” Nathan exclaimed. “The crowd--they loved you. The video is already Trashbat’s #1 download of all time--”

Dan stood up in panic, clenching his hand into a fist around the coin in his palm. “There’s a video?”

“Course there is!” Barley said. “I’m thinkin’ we can do a whole series, maybe even a regular column on the Trashbat blog--”

Dan took a deep breath. As he exhaled, the rage flowed out of him, along with all the carbon dioxide. “Send me a contract with details about how much you’re going to be paying me for this shit, and we’ll talk.” 

“Awww, look at you two,” Robin said.

“I’m so glad to see my two favorite young men finally getting along,” Diane sighed. “You’ll have to join Nathan and I for tea and knitting one of these days.”

“Wait, Nathan _knits_?”

“Sure do!” Barley said. “I’m making a scarf.”

“It’s one of Nathan’s tasks,” Diane explained, looking proud. “Great for keeping your mind off the cravings. Mindless, yet soothing.”

Mindless and soothing _did_ sound like the sort of thing Barley would like.

“Getting right good at it, too,” Barley interjected. “I got a great sponsor.”

It was a weird pairing, but, strangely, Dan was happy for Nathan. He probably needed a mother figure in his life, and he could have done worse--at least Diane wasn’t an _idiot._ Plus, the boy had all the red flags regarding a shit-ton of Mummy issues. Perhaps Diane would be a good influence on him, after all.

After the meeting ended, Dan gathered up Jones’s toybox. His fellow sober alcoholics stood around, discussing plans for Diane’s eight-year anniversary next week.

The idea of eight years without booze had seemed like a pipe dream not so very long ago. Now, Dan felt confident that he’d reach that milestone eventually. He felt in his pocket for his 30-day coin; it clanged against the 14-day reassuringly.

“Hey, Dan!” Diane called. “You coming out with us? We’re gonna grab ice cream at that new place over on Elizabeth Street.”

“They have all sorts of exotic flavors,” Richard added. “Lavender and fig’s my favorite.”

“Sorry guys, not this time,” Dan said, shoving Jones’s box under his arm. “Jones is working at the salon this afternoon, and Joey Ramone gets restless if he’s left alone too long.”

“Tell Jones I say hello!” Diane chirped with a wave. “And to send me more pictures of little Joey Ramone!”

“Wait,” Dan said, pausing. “Jones sends you pictures of Joey?”

Diane reached into her purse for her mobile and flashed a photo at Dan. It had obviously been taken that morning--Joey was curled around Dan’s head, one eye opened as he lazily stared at the camera. Dan, on the other hand, was dead to the world, asleep with his mouth wide open, obviously snoring.

“Awww, that’s well cute,” Barley said.

Surprisingly, Dan had to agree. 

Back at the flat, Dan puttered around the kitchen, preparing a modest stew for dinner as Joey Ramone tackled his feet. He was still rather an amateur in the kitchen, but Jones was even worse--Jones tended to live off of energy drinks, coffee, and gummy candy if left to his own devices, so Dan was happy to feed the man something with actual nutritional value. Jones was good at taking care of him, and Dan figured occasionally cooking was the least he could do to take care of Jones.

He slipped Joey a piece of meat. The cat ate it from his fingertips, licking them clean after he’d gobbled down the treat. Dan loved the little hellion--he was a handful, for sure, but he was so similar to Jones in both looks and personality that Dan was willing to overlook the cat’s tendency to claw the furniture and puke on the bedsheets.

As the stew simmered, Dan got out the sheaf of papers he’d hidden underneath the couch. He’d printed off the collection of poems he’d been writing, and he settled down with a red pen to mark any edits. They were different from his other works, more honest, more vulnerable, but Dan was proud of them--he’d finally managed to write something _true_ without a veil of alcohol obliterating his self-consciousness.

Dan uncapped the pen, scrawling a note to himself on the page. Joey, who had been nestled into a ball on Dan’s lap, purring furiously, woke and began gnawing on the pen, making writing impossible.

The door creaked open to reveal Jones, who entered the flat in his signature riot of noise. “Oi, what smells so good?”

“Just some stew,” Dan said. 

Jones lifted the lid off the pot to inspect the stew, lifting the lid off the pot and leaning over to breathe in the steam. “Mmm,” he sighed, before closing it with a clatter. “Is it ready yet?”

Dan checked the clock on the wall, the one with Jones’s face on its face. “Not too much longer. Twenty minutes or thereabouts.”

Jones dove onto the couch, displacing Joey as he rested his head in Dan’s lap. His lanky legs hung over the side, and he kicked off his boots with a sigh. 

“Long day?” Dan asked, smoothing Jones’s wild hair off his forehead.

“Was it ever. Thought it would never end.”

Joey chose that moment to pounce on Dan’s document. The crinkled pages scattered to the floor. “Joey Ramone!” Dan scolded. The cat paid him no mind, and promptly set about shredding them with his claws.

Jones lazily shooed the cat, who scurried off into the bedroom, probably to puke on his pillow out of spite--Joey was already learning how to weaponize his hairballs. Dan was frantically grabbing the pages, attempting to put them back in order before Jones could get a look.

It was too late--Jones held one of the pages in his hand, reading the words intently. “Dan? What’s this?”

Dan flushed. “Just--just something I’ve been working on,” he stuttered. The poems were raw, unedited, full of typos and bad syntax--he’d been in such a rush to get the words out that he hadn’t trusted himself to edit them, lest he edit the truth out of them. It seemed important for them to be true, for reasons Dan couldn’t explain.

Jones’s brow furrowed as he reread the poem. Dan, feeling overexposed and burning with shame, collected the rest of the pages in silence. “Dan--it’s good. Really, really good.”

Dan released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “You think so?” He stared at his hands, gripping the sheaf of paper in his hand, unable to meet Jones’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Jones said. The praise made Dan blush harder. Jones, seeming to sense Dan’s discomfort, slid a hand under Dan’s chin, lifting his head to look Jones in the eye. “I mean it, Dan. It’s... different from your old stuff, but _good_.”

There was no hint of a lie in Jones’s expression--Dan had no choice but to believe him. “There’s more?” Jones asked.

Dan nodded. He flipped through the pages, making sure they were at least in a somewhat comprehensible order, and handed them to Jones. 

Unable to sit still while Jones read, Dan busied himself in the kitchen, making a salad and stirring the stew rather more often than necessary to distract himself. He glanced over at Jones occasionally, but Jones was engrossed in his reading, and didn’t notice Dan staring.

Dan turned off the hob, ladling the stew into bowls and serving the salad. “Dinner’s ready,” he called.

Joey Ramone responded by scurrying wildly from wherever he’d been hiding to beg at Dan’s feet for some scraps. Jones took his time, stretching lazily as he walked over to the kitchen island, Dan’s poems in his hand. “Mmm, smells great.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Dan said, “it’s only stew.” Joey paid no attention, clawing at Dan’s shin until Dan gave in and slipped him a morsel of meat.

“I like your cooking,” Jones said. He paused for a beat, then added, “I liked your poems, too.”

As badly as Dan craved praise, he was no good at accepting it. His ears burned with that uncomfortable overexposed feeling. 

Jones grabbed his hand. “That one about the ocean of noise--I liked that, a lot.”

“It’s about you,” Dan admitted.

“Thought it might be.” Jones traced an abstract pattern on the back of Dan’s hand. 

Dan took a deep breath, carefully extricating his hand from beneath Jones’s. Jones’s eyes flashed with concern as Dan fished in his pocket for his 30-day coin. He dropped it into Jones’s open palm. “I got my 30-day coin,” Dan explained. 

Jones turned the coin over in his hand to examine it. “Fuckin’ hell, you really did it.” He rubbed his fingers over the embossed 1-month marking. “How many of these do you get?”

“There’s a 60-day and a 90-day one,” Dan explained, “then after that you get them yearly.” Jones flipped the coin, catching it in his hand, and Dan continued, “For the yearly ones they give you cake. It’s like... your sober birthday or something.”

“You’re gonna have quite the collection,” Jones said, beaming proudly. The fact that he believed that Dan could do it made Dan’s heart swell with pride.

“I’m an old man,” Dan quipped, trying to cover the strange swelling in his chest with humor, “time to start my coin collection.”

Jones chuckled, then tossed the coin back to Dan, who immediately gave it back to him. “It’s yours,” Dan explained. He didn’t know why, but it seemed important that Jones keep it. They said you were supposed to get sober for yourself, but Dan knew that he wouldn’t have bothered if it hadn’t been for Jones: he may have gotten sober for Jones, but in the process, he’d learned to like himself enough to _stay_ sober for himself.

“But--you _earned_ it,” Jones said.

“Yeah, but... if you hadn’t left, I never would’ve gotten my shit together enough to deserve it,” Dan blurted. It was true, even if he hadn’t been able to articulate it until the moment he’d said it aloud: if Jones hadn’t fucked off to Brighton after their fight, he would still be struggling to stop drinking on his own, depending on Jones far too heavily just to get through the day. Staying sober wasn’t easy, not even with the meetings, but the meetings--and the people he’d met at them-- _helped._

Maybe he still depended on Jones more than was healthy, but at least Jones was no longer the only pillar of support Dan had. If he was frustrated, if the cravings got too much to bear--at least he didn’t have to worry about taking it out on Jones. He could call Robin, go to a meeting; hell, he could even join Diane and Nathan’s knitting club until the craving passed.

Jones pocketed the coin. “I promise not to lose it.”

Dan knew Jones was telling the truth. There was no one he trusted more to hold onto it, not even himself--Jones was the sentimental type; their flat overflowed with all the things Jones refused to throw away. Even the most deformed Barbie doll was still beautiful, still meant something, was still deserving of care.

Dan might have spent the last decade as one of Jones’s broken toys, but he was determined to return the favor. He cleared his throat, which had gone tight. “Tomorrow I’m gonna call the sleep clinic that the doctor recommended, you know, for the snoring.”

“Sleep clinic?” Jones asked, brow furrowed. “They have sleep doctors?” He seemed genuinely confused by the idea.

“I--I want you to be able to sleep next to me,” Dan said.

“I _do_ sleep next to you.”

“You lie next to me at night. But you don’t _sleep_.” Jones opened his mouth to protest, but Dan held up his hand, open-palmed, to quiet him. “Don’t say you do, either. I know you’ve been telling me you don’t need sleep, but don’t be an idiot, Jones--everyone needs to sleep, especially after they reach the age of 30.”

“Oi! I only turned 30 six months ago,” Jones protested. “I’m not tired yet, old man.”

“But one day you will be,” Dan said. “And--this is difficult for me to say, but--I want you to sleep next to me for a long, long time. When you finally get tired enough, I want you to be able to spend the night, or the morning, or the afternoon--I don’t care when you sleep, but I want you to dream beside me, until we’re both cranky old men with arthritis and hemorrhoids and all sorts of embarrassing health problems.” 

It was not exactly a declaration of love, but Jones must have known what Dan meant, because he’d gone all teary-eyed.

“I love you, you great git,” Jones said, and Dan’s heart caught in his chest. Jones had often let Dan know how important he was to him (he’d said that, literally, over and over, those exact words: “You know you’re important to me, Dan. The most important person I’ve ever known”), but Jones had never said _those_ words. He communicated better in sound, and in some of Jones’s compositions, the quiet ones that he never played at any of his gigs, that he played for Dan’s ears alone, Dan had heard him say it. It was all Dan needed--because the moment that Jones said it, Dan began manfully breaking down.

Dan snuffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. His eyes were burning, and he stared into his soup, blinking rapidly, determined not to to cry into his dinner. 

Thankfully, he was saved from the embarrassment by Joey Ramone, who leapt onto the kitchen island with a cry that was half a yowl, half a purr. Dan buried his face into Joey’s warm fur, and slowly, the tears started to dry up. 

Jones reached across the table to smooth Dan’s hair. “Even after that night, I never stopped. I was mad as hell--but mad as I was, I never stopped.” He gently pulled on the ends of Dan’s hair, urging Dan to stop burrowing his face into Joey’s fur so Jones could get a look at him. 

Jones pressed the pad of his thumb against the tear caught in the corner of Dan’s eye. “You been sick a long time, Dan.”

Dan nodded in agreement. 

“An’ it ain’t always been easy, loving someone you can’t fix. I tried, yeah?... I’m used to bein’ able to fix things. There’s a hole in the wall--you spackle over it. Your amp blows--you put a new tube in it. But people? They don’t work like that.” Jones stroked Dan’s moustache, gently smoothing it into place. “You gotta let them fix themselves. An’ maybe--well, I tried too hard to fix what was broken for you, never gave you a chance to do it for yourself. And maybe that’s what broke... us.”

Joey’s tail lashed Dan in the face. “Jones, it wasn’t your fault--”

“Shhh,” Jones soothed. “It weren’t all my fault, but it weren’t all yours, neither. But what I’m saying is, maybe we don’t have to fix it on our own. Maybe this time we can fix it, together.”

Dan’s eyes started burning again. “I’m no good at fixing stuff. You know that, Jones.”

“You’re learning, Dan,” Jones said. “You can’t learn how to use a screwdriver without stripping a few screws. But I ain’t gonna leave you just ‘cos you mess up.” He wiped Dan’s eyes with his thumb again, then kissed the tear off his fingertip. “I was always going to come back, Dan... I was just waiting for you to try... an’ you did.” He held Dan’s coin up proudly. “You’re goin’ to the meetings, you made all these sober friends, you’re writing again.”

“Barley offered me a job,” Dan said softly. Jones did a double-take. “Writing a regular feature for Trashbat on sobriety, maybe doing a few videos, too.”

“No shit,” Jones said. “You gonna take him up on it?”

Dan shrugged. “Told him to send me a contract. If he’s paying enough, well, maybe.”

“You _know_ Barley pays better than anyone else in the business,” Jones said. His eyes crinkled into a smile, his mouth following just a moment later.

“The hell...?”

“Never thought I’d see the day you ‘n Barley became friends,” Jones said, voice muffled as though he was holding back a laugh. “Just promise me you won’t let him kiss you again, yeah?”

Dan gagged. Joey was so perturbed by the sound that he skittered across the table with a yowl, knocking Dan’s stew onto his lap.

Jones got up from his seat, walking over to Dan. “Our fucking son, I swear--”

“He takes after you,” Dan grumbled.

“Nah. He’s a clumsy little bugger just like you,” Jones said, smiling. “C’mon, let’s get you out of those clothes and cleaned up.”

“He’s our son,” Dan said, “maybe he takes after both of us.”

Jones tucked a lock of Dan’s hair behind his ear, scratching lightly at Dan’s scalp. Dan leaned into the touch with a noise that sounded suspiciously like a purr, and Jones nudged him in the shoulder. “An’ you say Joey takes after me.”

Dan growled, and Jones laughed. “C’mon, grumpy cat. I’ll race you to the shower!”

He tore off down the hall to the bathroom, shucking his clothes as he went, and Dan followed. As he watched Jones’s slim, white haunches flex as he walked down the hall, a fragment of a poem slipped into his head: 

Dan paused for a moment to jot the thought down on a piece of paper.

_your bare back  
a slip of moonlight shining  
down the hallway, the one  
beautiful thing in all the mess  
and i follow you  
the way the tide follows the moon, _

“Hey!” Jones’s voice echoed from the bathroom. “You coming, or what?”

“Just a minute,” Dan said, adding _always coming back to the shore_ to the scrap of a poem.

Jones made an impatient sound, and something clattered to the floor, no doubt the victim of a particularly rambunctious Joey Ramone. Dan smiled to himself. It wasn’t done, but he had no doubt that sharing a shower with Jones would give him the inspiration he needed to finish.

Inspiration was everywhere these days, now that Dan didn’t need the drink to find it. 

Of course, inspiration wasn’t worth much when you were self-destructing too hard to put the words on the page. Maybe _that_ was why Dan was writing again... he’d finally figured out how to deal with his shit, at least enough to quiet the urge to drink long enough to hear the words.

The water in the bathroom cut on with a hiss. “Get your ass in here or else you’ll be taking a cold shower!” Jones shouted.

Dan pulled his shirt over his head. Inspiration, indeed. He was feeling pretty _inspired_ at the moment, and writing had nothing to do with it. Dan figured Jones would enjoy it all the same. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a hell of a fic! I expected to write about 10k for this... my muse had other ideas. The entire month of May was a 30k sprint to the finish.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed your gift, [@QueenBoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenBoo/pseuds/QueenBoo)! 
> 
> Thank you everyone who stuck it out to the end. You're the real OGs <3

**Author's Note:**

> The muse gets off on your kudos and comments, so let her know she's done good ;)
> 
> Find me on tumblr [@the-stoned-ranger](http://the-stoned-ranger.tumblr.com)


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